SOBER 


VANCE 
THOMPSON 


.    .     LIBRARY    .    . 

Connecticut 
Agricultural  College. 

VOL l.5...:l.&s...^^ 

CLASS    NO. I-    J   6     ..\.  2ir\ 

COST -.8  X'     

DATE D..ei:.,-^4 1  9    l^ 


BOOK     178. T37    c    1 

THOMPSON    #    DRINK    AND    BE    SOBER 


3    ^153    a00t,32TM    5 


lA 


^^' 


DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 


DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 


BY 


VANCE   THOMPSON 

Author  of  "Eat  and  Grow  Thin,"  '<Thc  Ego  Book,"  "  French  Portraits," 
"Diplomatic  Mysteries,"  "The  Life  of  Ethelbcrt  Ncvin,"  etc. 


NEW   YORK 

MOFFAT,  YARD   AND   COMPANY 

11916 


T-^^ 


Copyright,  1915,  by 

MOFFAT,  YARD  AND  COMPANY 

New  York 


All  Rights  Reserved 

I  SXB6 

Published  October  23,  1915 

Second  Printing,  November  i,  1Q15 

Third  Printing,  February,  1916 

Fourth  Printing,  February,  1916 

Fifth  Printing,  April,  1916 

Sixth  Printing,  August,  19x6 

Seventh  Printing,  October,  1916 


THE   QUINN    A    BODEN    00.    PRESS 
RAHWAV,  rt.  J. 


To 

A.  PARKER  NEVIN 

My  hope  is  that  you  will  approve  of  this  book — both  as  jurist  and 
sociologist.  One  thing  I  know:  The  intention  is  so  good — the  sub- 
ject is  so  important — that  you  will  accept  the  book  as  a  mark  of 
my  friendship  and  admiration.  We  discussed  this  subject  many 
times,  and  because  I  kept  in  memory  many  of  the  things  you  said, 
this  book  is  both  better  and  wiser.  And  so  in  placing  your  name  on 
this  page  I  pay  a  debt  and  claim  a  distinguished  friendship. 

Vance  Thompson. 


PREFACE 

Upon  no  subject — neither  upon  love  nor 
upon  war — have  there  been  so  many  books 
written  as  upon  drink.  Indeed  one  may  say 
there  is  no  significant  writer,  from  the  historian 
Herodotus  to  the  wanton  poet  Verlaine,  who 
has  not  touched  upon  this  dark  problem. 

And  the  reason  is  plain:  it  lies  at  the  root  of 
success  in  life,  even  as  it  lies  at  the  root  of  hap- 
piness in  love;  it  colors  all  literature  because 
its  stain  is  upon  every  phase  of  life.  The 
philosopher  has  seen  in  it  the  higher  problem 
of  man's  free  will.  Is  Stoic  self-control  to  be 
enforced  by  law?  And  if  man  is  to  be  ironed 
and  bar-locked  into  a  sober  way  of  life,  what 
of  that  imperial  will  of  his?  He  is  of  slight 
value  as  a  citizen  and  as  a  national  unit  (the 
philosopher  declares)  who  has  not  will-power 
enough  to  keep  out  of  the  gutter. 

The  political  economists  have  written  thou- 
sands of  books — which  you  will  never  read — 
on  the  drink  question.     Not  even  the  doctors 

vii 


vlii  PREFACE 

have  differed  so  widely  as  they  differ.  They 
are  uncommonly  fond  of  statistics ;  and  on  both 
sides  of  the  question  they  have  attained  a  de- 
moniac inaccuracy  in  the  statement  of  facts. 
Temperance  orators  of  the  political  sort  have 
made  it  an  issue.  And  the  battle  is  ceaselessly 
waged  in  literature.  Popular  novelists  write 
their  confessions;  they  tell  you  how  they  have 
solved  (victoriously)  the  problem  of  drink. 
These  are  brave,  personal  books.  I  commend 
them.  I  praise  the  writers.  But  over  against 
Jack  London  you  find  no  less  a  man  than  Gil- 
bert K.  Chesterton,  battling,  in  the  name  of 
liberty,  for  the  wild  delights  and  festivals  of 
drink — voluptas,  gaudia.  (His  is  the  old  Eng- 
lish tradition — the  tradition  of  Smollett  and 
Dickens,  which  in  its  time  was  generous  and 
gay;  in  their  ample  pages  drink  and  love  and 
laughter  were  triune;  not  even  Mr.  Chesterton 
can  hold  them  together  in  the  haggard  Bohe- 
mia of  modern  fiction.) 

You  cannot,  I  say,  get  away  from  the  drink 
problem.  It  meets  you  at  every  turn.  It  goes 
abroad  at  night  with  the  criminal.  It  is  in 
the  madhouse  and  the  jail.  There  is  hardly 
a  home  in  the  broad  land  into  which  it  has 


PREFACE  IX 

not  made  its  way.  In  some  shape  or  other  this 
monstrous  problem  confronts  you  at  every 
crossroads  of  life. 

When  war  broke  over  the  world  statesmen 
and  leaders  grappled  with  it,  as  though  it  were 
the  one  immediate  evil.  And  it  was  the  imme- 
diate evil.  Until  drink  was  chained  and 
locked  away  men  could  not  even  kill  each 
other  decently  and  with  efficient  certainty. 

(While  the  young  and  fiery  patriot  bran- 
dished his  sword  and  shouted:  "Let  me  lead 
Britons!  "  the  old,  old  general,  out  of  a  serious 
wisdom,  said:  "When  the  canteen  is  fifty 
leagues  in  our  rear,  yes!" 

And  he  had  his  way.) 

If  the  game  of  death  can  be  played  only 
in  terms  of  sobriety  it  is  not  unthinkable  that 
the  game  of  life  can  best  be  won  in  the  same 
way. 

But  how  are  you  going  to  establish  the  laws 
of  the  game?  How  are  you  going  to  do  it  in 
a  civil  world  unruled  by  the  abrupt  tyranny 
of  military  law?  How  are  you  going  to  do 
it  in  a  way  that  shall  preserve  the  highest 
reverence  for  the  dignity  of  social  life  and  for 
human  liberty? 


X  PREFACE 

It  is  to  answer  these  questions  that  I  have 
written  this  little  book. 

I  think  there  is  one  thing  the  state  can  do — 
and  it  is  not  a  vision  or  a  phantasy;  it  is  a 
proved  achievement — which  will  solve  the 
drink  problem.  Not  little  by  little,  with 
shifts  and  compromises;  but  bluntly,  com- 
pellingly  and  completely  as  Great  Britain 
solved  within  her  borders  the  problem  of 
man's  enslavement  by  man. 

As  you  shall  see. 

But  it  is  not  for  that  impersonal  thing,  the 
state,  I  have  written  this  book.  I  have  written  it 
for  men  and  women.  It  is  not  the  state,  fed 
fat  on  revenues,  that  suffers  from  drink.  Why 
should  it  be  expected  to  act?  It  never  has 
acted  on  its  own  volition.  It  has  to  be  forced 
and  bullied  into  the  way  of  right-doing, 
for  it  is  always  (even  in  a  democracy)  far 
behind  the  public  intelligence  and  the  pub- 
lic will.  That  is  why  the  drink  problem  is 
a  personal  problem — for  the  man  and  the 
woman. 

Everyone  must  face  it.  I  know  quite  well 
you  are  not  a  drunkard.  You  are  not  a  dipso- 
maniac; your  brain  is  not  swept  with  drink- 


PREFACE  xi 

storms.  Your  brother  is  not  drinking  with 
Pan.  Your  daughter  is  not  laughing  with  the 
alcoholic  girls  at  the  country  club.  And  yet 
the  problem  is  none  the  less  a  personal  one — 
if  for  no  other  reason  than  that  it  is  a  problem 
of  state  economy  and  the  state  is  just  what  you 
make  it.  It  is  organized  in  precisely  the  way 
you  want  it  organized — you  and  the  others 
who  vote. 

And  so  it  is  your  problem. 

In  New  York  City  there  is  a  melancholy 
cohort  that  spends  one  million  dollars  a  day 
for  drink.  I  admit  that  you  are  not  of  them — 
but  that  army  of  slackers,  wasters  and  crim- 
inals exists  and  continues  to  exist  by  your 
sovereign  permission.  I  have  no  desire  to 
come  at  you  with  a  sentimental  appeal.  This 
is  not  a  matter  of  sentiment.  There  is  no  use 
in  changing  a  man's  feelings  (you  will  admit) 
if  he  goes  on  being  wrong-headed.  I  have 
tried  to  put  the  case  in  a  plain  way — without 
exaggeration,  without  rhetoric,  with  sympa- 
thetic understanding  of  the  drinker  and  even 
the  purveyor  of  drink.  You  are  a  man  of  the 
world,  I  take  it,  and  you  want  to  see  the  thing 
broadly.     You  are  keenly  aware  of  the  two 


xii  PREFACE 

sides  of  the  question;  you  know  there  must 
be  a  choice — and  all  choice  implies  loss. 
Exactly  what  that  loss  is  you  have  a  right  to 
know.  I  think  in  the  end  you  will  agree  with 
me  that  a  remedy  is  needed — and  must  be 
applied  by  the  state;  but  you  have  a  right  to 
know  the  facts  and  all  the  facts.  You  will 
find  them,  I  think,  honestly  stated  in  this  book. 
All  of  them — what  alcohol  is,  why  men  drink 
it,  why  some  drinkers  are  drunkards,  what  pre- 
disposition of  mind  or  body  encourages  them, 
the  pathology  of  vice  and  the  psychology  of 
the  drunkard — strange  and  interesting  things 
are  these.  You  shall  have  to  go  with  me  into 
scenes  of  darkness  and  violence;  you  shall  look 
in  the  face  of  crime — and  hear  mad  voices 
shouting;  always  is  it  that  you  may  know  what 
thing  it  is — the  Drink.  Hear,  too,  what  the 
scientist  has  to  say,  the  physician,  the  economist 
and  the  student  (less  one-sided)  of  life;  but, 
above  all,  see  for  yourself  just  what  this  con- 
fused problem  is.  For,  I  think,  that  when  you 
see  it — you,  the  men  and  women  who  direct 
the  intelligence  of  the  state  and  shape  its  will 
— then  only  it  will  be  solved. 
You  are  not  convinced? 


PREFACE  xiil 

Before  you  pronounce  judgment  I  trust  you 
will  read  this  brief  in  the  case. 

And  then — what  is  of  more  importance — is 
the  immutable  fact  that  always,  in  the  end,  a 
moral  crusade  wins.  And  this  is  a  moral 
crusade. 


/ 

/ 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE  .,      i 

I  think  it  should  be  made  clear  in  the  begin- 
ning that  there  is  only  one  "  drink-problem  " 
— that  of  drinking  alcohol.  The  drink  habit 
varies  with  different  grades  of  society;  it 
changes  with  climate;  but  the  drink-problem 
neither  varies  nor  changes.  Just  as  the  beer- 
drinker  takes  his  beer  for  the  sake  of  the  al- 
cohol in  it,  so  the  wine-drinker  takes  his  wine, 
the  brandy-drinker  his  brandy.  He  who  drinks 
alcoholic  beverages  drinks  for  the  sake  of  the 
alcohol — no  matter  what  excuse  he  offers.  So 
the  first  question  is:  What  is  alcohol? 

II.    WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE 

MAN  i6 

It  is  in  the  brain  that  alcohol  produces  Its 
first  effects.  So  my  interest  (and  yours,  I 
trust)  is  in  what  alcohol  does  to  this  essential 

part  of  man. Alcohol  is  intoxicating;  that 

is  why  men  drink  it — and  for  no  other  reason; 
and  he  who  would  get  at  the  root  of  intoxica- 
tion— its  pleasure  and  pain,  its  peril  and  pen- 
alty— must  study  the  physiological  effects  of 
alcohol  on  the  brain.  There  he  may  read  its 
story  and   its   mystery. 


III.     THE  MODERATE  DRINKER      r.     41 

You  have  met  this  important  person.  In  the 
discussion  of  the  good  and  ill  of  alcohol  no  one 
is  more  conspicuous.  A  library  of  books  has 
been  written  about  him.  He  is  the  whetstone 
of  every  argument.  Sometimes  he  is  old;  usu- 
ally he  is  young;  but  there  is  one  extraordinary 
thing  about  him — always  he  is  going  down- 
Stairs.    Always  he  is  getting  away  from  that 


xvl  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAOB 

ideal  state  of  his;  and  if  you  meet  him  to- 
morrow or  the  next  month  or  the  next  year, 
he  will  have  ceased  to  be,  in  some  appreci- 
able degree,  as  moderate  a  drinker.  For  mod- 
erate drinking  is  a  stage;  it  is  not  a  fixed  point. 
It  is,  as  the  French  soldier  says,  an  etape. 
There  is  no  moderate  drinker  who  is  "not 
going  to  the  next  stage  of  his  journey,  or  who 
is  not  turning  back. 

IV.     WINE  AND  BEER  AND  THEIR 

LITTLE  RURAL  BROTHER    .,     6$ 

It  is  a  maxim,  melancholy  in  its  veracity, 
that  the  road  to  drunkenness  is  paved  with 
mild  stimulants.  Unless  he  is  a  lunatic,  no 
one  begins  by  drinking  spirits.  Against  such 
an  indignity  the  mere  physical  conscience  re- 
volts— the  stomachic  conscience  turns  over  in 
disgust.  It  is  only  when  alcohol  is  forced  in 
upon  it  in  pleasanter  wine-y  ways — in  suave 
disguises    of    malt — that    nature    compromises, 

saying:  "  O,  well,  if  you  insist!" Nature 

is  always  amenable  to  compromise;  it  is  her 
supreme  law  to  preserve  existence  at  any  cost; 
and  she  prolongs  the  poisoned  life  by  adapt- 
ing the  organism  to  the  exigencies  of  the 
abnormal  habit.  Gradually  she  learns  to 
accept  the  alcoholic  doses  in  the  wine  or  beer; 
and  slowly  she  hardens  the  physical  conscience 
until  it  accepts  its  brandy  neat. 

V.     ADULTERATION  AND  FALSIFL 

CATION    .....     95 

We  have  been  told  often  enough  by  the  wine- 
makers  that  they  are  moved  by  the  most  phil- 
anthropic motives;  it  is  to  save  the  race  from 
drunkenness  that  they  want  permission  to  dose 
the  young  generation  with  "  wine  and  water." 
And  the  advertisements  of  the  beer-brewers 
will  tell  you  what  rare  philanthropists  they 
are — providing  beer  as  a  "  food  "  for  the  poor 
man  who  has  no  mutton.  Then  if  wine  be 
so  good  a  thing — if  pure  beer  be  so  valuable  a 
food — why  do  they  not  sell  a  pure  wine  and 
a  pure  beer? 


CONTENTS  xvii 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VI.     WHY     SOME     DRINKERS     ARE 

DRUNKARDS    .  .         .  .   107 

There  are  two  kinds  of  drunkards.  One  is 
morally  defective  from  the  start — a  sort  of 
moral  imbecile;  that  was  the  cause  of  his  tak- 
ing to  drink.  The  other  drunkard  has  had  to 
set  up  a  pathological  process  which  would 
bring  him  to  the  same  state  of  moral  imbecil- 
ity. The  one  was  born  to  his  drunken  inherit- 
ance; the  other  prepared  himself  for  it.  The 
one  was  diseased  at  the  start.  The  other  took 
his  self-appointed  way,  through  vice,  to  the 
identical  degenerative  condition  of  disease. 
Both   victims   of    alcohol    are   going   the   same 

road  of  moral  insanity  and  mental  death. 

Why,  then,  are  some  drinkers  drunkards? 

Why  not  all? It  is  the  physiologist  who 

answers  these  questions. 

VII.     THERAPEUTICS  .         .         .133 

There  is  no  disagreement  as  to  the  symptoms 
of  the  disease;  there  is  slight  diversity  as 
to  the  treatment.  Your  inebriate,  swept  by 
periodic  drink-storms,  is  ill;  your  moderate 
drinker,  tippling  diurnally,  is  ill;  now  the  kind 
of  treatment  demanded  by  his  alcoholic  state 
depends  upon  his  general  health — a  matter  for 
the  qualified  medical  man.  Of  equal  impor- 
tance is  the  moral  side  of  the  treatment. 
Drunkard,  or  light-tippling  man,  he  can  be 
brought  back  to  the  sober  way  of  life,  if  there 
can  be  wakened  in  him  the  Will-to-be-Sober. 
And  then  a  new  interest,  driving  out  the  old, 
will  serve  to  hold  him  to  his  purpose.  Only  by 
new  activities  can  you  transform  his  desires. 

VIII.     CRIME,     DRINK-STORMS     AND 

DEGENERATION      .  .         .152 

When  a  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England  said: 
"  If  sifted,  nine-tenths  of  the  crime  of  England 
and  Wales  could  be  traced  to  drink,"  the 
statement  had  a  repellent  air — as  though  it 
were   born   of   uncritical   fervor;    but   in   this 


xviii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

country  the  facts,  carefully  collated,  come 
within  measurable  distance  of  his  statement. 
An  illustration:  The  famous  investigation 
made  by  the  Massachusetts  Bureau  of  Labor 
Statistics  showed  that  eighty-four  per  cent,  of 
all  the  criminals  under  conviction  in  that  state 
were  drink-made  criminals.  As  you  see,  it  is 
almost  nine-tenths.  And  again:  The  last 
census  of  the  United  States  shows  that  the 
institutional  cases  of  insanity  are  in  almost 
exact  proportion  to  the  amount  of  alcoholic 
consumption.  Insanity  is  the  mad  son  of  alco- 
hol. Idiocy  is  its  driveling  daughter.  Suicide 
is  its  despairing  child. 

IX.     DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES  177 

Ours  is  the  drunkennest  civilization  the  world 

has  ever  known. For  generations  science, 

religion,  statesmanship  had  fought  this  evil 
thing  of  drink;  they  had  pelted  the  evil  thing 
with  tracts  and  tied  it  up  in  red-tape;  all  to 
no  saving  purpose.  In  a  world  at  war,  when 
the  need  of  sobriety  was  imperative,  the  nations 
found  a  way  of  scotching  the  evil  thing.  It 
was  simple  and  practical  as  shutting  off  an 
electric  current.  It  prohibited  the  manufacture 
and  sale  of  the  fiercer  kinds  of  alcoholic  drink. 
France  was  first  in  this,  as  she  is  always  first 
in  the  noblest  missions  of  humanity.  A  half- 
measure  to  be  sure,  but  a  measure  of  immense 
significance  by  reason  of  the  principle  it  lays 
down.  There  is  here  more  than  the  suggestion 
of  a  remedy. 

X,    ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS         .   198 

There  is  no  contradiction  between  ethics  and 
economics.  Not  the  wealth  of  a  nation  but  the 
highest  welfare  of  the  citizens  is  the  thing  to 
be  promoted.  When  there  is  such  an  opposition 
it  is  the  economical  factor — not  the  ethical — 
that  must  go  to  the  wall.  The  chief  argument 
of  the  liquor  forces  is  a  threat  of  financial 
panic,  and,  since  "  a  million  toilers  will  lose 
their  jobs,"  a  threat  of  labor  panic.  The 
whine  of  the  "  vested  interests  "  is  more  diffi- 
cult to  meet;  but  a  threat  is  the  sort  of  thing 


CHAPTER 


CONTENTS  xix 


one  can  answer  more  effectively. And  the 

answer  is  here. 


XL     MEASURES  REMEDIAL     .         ..  218 

The  danger  of  studying  a  question  so  vital — 
a  subject  with  such  a  swing  and  urge  of  emo- 
tion in  it — is  the  tendency  to  become  enthusi- 
astic and  slop  about.  The  emotional  way  of 
fighting  drink  is  obsolete.  The  reason  is  that 
the  hour  of  controversial  issues  is  past.  There 
is  no  longer  any  dispute  as  to  the  main  and 
primary  facts  in  the  case  against  alcohol. 
With  a  thoroughness  of  intellectual  treatment 
none  can  gainsay  our  masters  in  physiology, 
sociology  and  economics  have  pronounced 
judgment.     And   the   nation   is   awake   to   the 

truth. And  now  comes  the  question? 

What  can  the  state  do  to  alcohol  ? 


DRINK  AND  BE   SOBER 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE 


No  one  has  any  business  to  go  wrong;  al- 
ways his  intelligence  should  be  in  advance  of 
his  act. 

And  the  one  man  in  whom  ignorance  is 
inexcusable  is  he  who  plays  with  the  wild  and 
shifty  forces  of  alcoholic  drink.  That  man 
should  be  wise  above  others;  his  intelligence 
should  be  ever  on  outpost  duty;  and  his  first 
business  is  to  know  what  alcohol  is.  For 
one  thing  is  certain:  when  men  drink — whether 
they  drink  beer  or  wine  or  brandy — they  drink 
alcohol.  The  sole  reason  for  the  existence  of 
these  beverages  is  that  they  provide  him  who 
drinks  them  with  a  greater  or  less  quantity 
of  alcohol.  They  may  be  disguised  with  fan- 
ciful perfumes  and  flavors,  hidden  in  a  harle- 
quinade of  colors,  but  the  reason  for  their  ex- 
istence is  always  the  same — it  is  alcohol. 


2  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

An  immense  amount  of  hypocrisy  has  grown 
up  about  the  custom  and  habit  of  drinking 
alcoholic  beverages.  It  has  been  given  a  free 
and  lordly  air,  as  though  there  were  some- 
thing exceptionally  big-hearted  and  unselfish 
about  it.  This  lie  has  come,  roaring  arro- 
gantly, down  through  the  ages.  It  has  got 
itself  told  in  prose  and  verse;  in  fact,  it  reels 
through  most  of  the  second-rate  literature  of 
every  country. 

That  is  bad  enough;  indeed,  it  is  responsi- 
ble for  more  than  its  fair  share  of  the  evils 
that  come  (unquestionably)  from  the  abuse 
of  alcohol — and  I  shall  have  a  word  to  say,  in 
due  time  and  place,  of  the  physiological  basis 
of  this  false  emotionalism  and  fugitive  altru- 
ism; but  there  is  a  subtler  hypocrisy  which 
makes  its  appeal  to  man's  vanity. 

''  It's  a  rare  good  vintage,"  says  the  wine- 
drinker,  holding  up  his  glass. 

I  have  heard  the  phrase  hundreds  of  times — 
parroted  in  Parisian  cafes,  stated  with  a  pomp- 
ous air  of  discrimination  at  ornate  dinner- 
tables,  muttered  by  wine-drunkards  in  the  cur- 
tained darkness  of  Italian  wine-shops.  Now 
two  things  are  to  be  said:  the  first  is  that  a 


THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE  3 

discriminating  wine-palate  is  as  rare  as  white 
peacocks  are  in  Arizona;  and  the  second  is 
that  such  a  man — a  connoisseur  in  vintages — 
has  gained  his  knowledge  by  wide  drinking. 
It,  no  more  than  a  knowledge  of  trigonometry, 
comes  by  nature.  And  when  he  tells  you  he 
drinks  his  wine  because  it  comes  from  Capri — 
and  quotes  his  Horace;  or  when  he  prates 
of  the  sunny  hills  of  Burgundy  or  the  white 
slopes  of  Provence,  he  is  honest  neither  with 
himself  nor  with  you.  He  may  indeed  like  this 
flavor  or  that  bouquet,  but  he  drinks  his  Bur- 
gundy— not  because  its  bouquet  calls  to  him, 
but  because  there  is  fifteen  per  cent,  of  alcohol 
in  the  wine.  He  drinks  for  the  sake  of  the 
alcohol,  though  it  may  be  quite  true  that  the 
flavor — the  haunting  immaterial  poetry  of  the 
wine — makes  him  prefer  that  pleasant  way  of 
getting  the  alcohol  into  him.  Why  not?  In 
other  respects,  too,  he  is  a  nice-mannered 
man.  He  had  rather  dine  delicately  at  a 
well-appointed  table  than  gorge  on  boiled  food 
in  a  cellar.  He  has  only  disesteem  for  the 
coarse  man  who  gulps  down  fiery  rum.  But 
he — just  as  the  coarse  fellow  drinks  the  rum — 
drinks   his   Burgundy  for   the   alcohol   that  is 


4  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

in  it.  That  is  the  plain  truth;  the  rest  is 
mere  hypocrisy — often  unconscious  hypocrisy, 
for  the  lie  is  so  ancient  that  men  inherit  it, 
like  the  gout.  Of  course,  the  well-bred  man 
prefers  a  radiant  and  delicate  claret — a  petu- 
lant wine  of  Champagne — to  the  dreary,  sod- 
dening  gin  the  ^^  navvy  "  swills;  but  his  object 
is  the  same — to  get  the  alcohol  into  his  sys- 
tem. (If  you  were  a  kissing  man  you  had 
rather  kiss  a  pretty,  perfumed  lady  in  silks 
and  laces,  than  the  plowman's  blowsy  girl;  but 
it  would  be  kissing  all  the  same.) 

Thus,  I  think,  it  should  be  made  clear  in 
the  beginning  that  there  is  only  one  ''  drink 
problem  " — that  of  drinking  alcohol.  It  varies 
with  different  grades  of  society;  it  changes  with 
climate;  but  the  problem  neither  varies  nor 
changes.  The  dreary  '^  cider  boy  "  of  the  Con- 
necticut hills  is  brother  to  the  flushed  girl — 
in  silk  stockings — shouting  for  "  high-balls  " 
on  the  porch  of  the  country  club;  and  the  Bur- 
gundy man  is  sib  to  the  man  of  "  mixed  ale  "; 
one  and  all  are  drinkers  of  alcohol. 

And  what  is  alcohol? 


THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE  5 

II 

It  is  a  simple  thing,  alcohol. 

The  chemist  will  describe  it  for  you  in  a 
pretty  arrangement  of  letters  and  arabic  fig- 
ures, from  which  you  will  learn  that  it  is 
composed  of  carbon,  oxygen  and  hydrogen. 
The  kind  you  drink — or  do  not  drink — is 
ethylic  alcohol;  and  the  chemist  will  tell  you 
it  is  produced  by  the  fermentation  of  aqueous 
sugar-solutions  and  subsequent  distillations. 

All  of  which  is  important  but  uninteresting. 

It  is  only  when  the  chemist  tells  you  what 
causes  the  fermentation  that  you  listen  to  him 
willingly.  Then  you  meet — with  profound 
amazement — the  mycoderma  cerevisice. 

You  may  think  of  it,  not  as  something  fear- 
some, but  as  a  species  of  fungus,  made  up  of 
minute  organisms,  living  much  as  you  and  I 
do  in  the  ordinary  way  of  life — taking  nourish- 
ment, absorbing  oxygen  and  giving  off  Car- 
bon, reproducing  their  kind  and,  in  due  season, 
dying;  their  biography  at  first  glance  would 
seem  to  be  that  of  ordinary  men.  And  yet 
you  shall  see  that  their  strange  little  lives  have 
all  the  inevitable  horror  of  Greek  tragedy. 


6  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

They  are  found,  these  mycodermata,  in  great 
quantities — a  veritable  dust  of  microscopic  life 
— on  the  skins  of  ripe  grapes.  They  are  mys- 
terious dwellers  in  the  bloom  of  the  grape 
(whereof  poets  have  sung)  and  they  are  the 
mysterious  soul  of  wine.  They  are  the  obscure 
alcoholic  gods. 

Have  you  seen  the  brown  Italian  girls — 
or  the  great-limbed  women  of  Switzerland — 
tread  the  grapes?  At  all  events  you  have  seen 
a  wine-press.  Then  you  understand  how  the 
resolute  little  mycodermata  get  into  the  juice 
of  the  grape.  What  they  do  there  is  the  be- 
ginning— the  first  act — in  the  great  human 
tragedy  of  drink. 

The  chemist  (of  whom  you  have  heard)  says 
they  take  from  the  grape-sugar  a  certain  part 
of  its  oxygen.  This  changes  the  chemical  rela- 
tions of  the  carbon,  oxygen  and  hydrogen  of 
which  the  sugar  is  composed,  and,  by  a  rear- 
rangement of  the  elements,  alcohol  is  formed. 
You  can  watch  the  process;  it  is  gradual.  Lit- 
tle by  little  the  oxygen  is  consumed,  until  the 
entire  quantity  of  sugar  disappears;  what  is 
left  is  alcohol.  With  the  alcohol  you  find 
water,  coloring  matter,  flavoring  substances  and 


THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE  7 

(tragically)  the  corpses  of  the  little  myco- 
dermata,  who,  having  devoured  all  the  sugar, 
die  of  starvation  and  sink  into  alcoholic  graves. 
(It  is  a  melancholy  destiny,  but  not  without  par- 
allel: In  Persepolis  they  worshiped  fire  and 
fire  destroyed  the  city.) 

These  little  inhabitants  of  the  bloom  of  the 
grape  are  their  own  victims.  They  are  the 
makers  of  that  mysterious  and  perplexing  poi- 
son— alcohol — and  they  are  its  first  martyrs. 
In  their  obscure  and  tragic  lives  you  may  see, 
if  you  will,  a  symbol;  for  it  is  as  if,  in  invent- 
ing alcohol,  they  had  invented  suicide. 

They  build  a  house,  but  the  house  they 
build  is  death,  and  it  falls  and  buries  them 
in  its  ruins. 

This,  then,  is  alcohol,  the  chemist  avers;  and 
out  of  the  fermented  mass  (wherein  the  sui- 
cidal mycodermata  found  drunken  graves)  the 
pure  alcohol  is  distilled. 

For  the  Scot  who  gets  his  alcohol  from 
barley,  the  American  who  gets  his  from 
maize  or  the  German  who  takes  his  from  a 
potato,  the  process  is  the  same;  each  depends 
upon  the  collaboration  of  these  indefatigable 
little  organisms.    When  the  grain  is  malted  and 


8  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

made  ready  for  fermentation  most  of  the  starch 
is  turned  into  grape-sugar — making  thus  a 
saccharine  solution  akin  to  grape-juice — which 
serves  as  food  for  the  mycodermata.  (They  are 
usually  introduced  in  yeast  ferments.) 

Alcohol  is  a  liquid,  ethyl  hydrate — C2H5OH, 
says  the  chemist;  in  its  pure  state  it  is  limpid, 
colorless  and  the  odor  is  suave. 


Ill 

There  are  two  things  I  wish  to  make  per- 
fectly clear:  what  man  does  to  alcohol,  and 
what  alcohol  does  to  man.  They  are  epic 
things.  Pure  alcohol  is,  as  I  have  said,  limpid, 
colorless  and  suave  of  odor.  When  man  has 
had  his  way  with  it,  its  limpidity  is  trou- 
bled, and  its  colors  and  odors  are  those  of  a 
girl  of  the  night.  I  am  not  referring  here  to 
the  base  falsifications  and  adulterations  of  mod- 
ern spirits,  wines  and  beers;  there  is  a  chap- 
ter for  that  in  this  book.  What  I  would  note 
here — for  convenient  reference — is  the  form  in 
which  alcohol  is  offered  and  the  amount  of 
alcohol  the  common  beverages  contain.  They 
vary  greatly,  of  course. 


THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE  9 

Brandy,  which  Dr.  Johnson  called  a  drink 
for  strong  men — and  he  was  the  son  of  a 
drunken  generation — is  produced  by  distilling 
wine  and  contains  (when  first  made)  about 
fifty  per  cent,  of  alcohol.  It  is  your  real  'alf 
an'  'alf.  In  its  first  stage  it  is  a  colorless 
liquid.  It  is  only  when  it  is  put  up  in  casks  that 
it  steals  an  amber  hue  from  the  wood.  Gradu- 
ally its  alcoholic  strength  diminishes — a  fair 
French  brandy  contains  about  forty  per  cent, 
of  alcohol  when  it  comes  to  market.  The 
alcoholic  strength  of  whisky,  whether  distilled 
from  barley,  maize,  rye  or  other  grains,  is  a 
trifle  less;  rum,  a  product  of  distilled  molasses 
and  the  refuse  of  the  cane-sugar  factories,  is 
not  quite  so  strong  as  whisky;  and  gin,  which 
is  a  distillation  of  unmalted  grain,  rectified  and 
flavored  with  juniper  berries,  contains  about 
thirty  per  cent,  of  alcohol.  These  are  the 
commoner  spirits — at  least,  in  the  white  man's 
world. 

In  natural  wines,  derived  from  the  fer- 
mented juice  of  the  grape,  the  quantity  of 
alcohol  varies  from  eight  to  twenty-five  per 
cent.  Beer  is  a  beverage  made  (theoretically)' 
from  the  fermented  infusions  of  malt,  flavored 


10  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

with  hops.  The  ales  and  beers  of  commerce 
vary  greatly  in  strength;  in  general,  they  may 
be  said  to  contain  from  three  to  nine  per  cent, 
of  alcohol. 

These  familiar  facts  had  to  get  themselves 
told;  one  cannot  discuss  a  thing  without  first 
defining  it — that  were  to  tug  at  a  rope  of 
sand.  And  the  various  forms  of  alcoholic 
drink — each  having  its  own  pleasure  and  pain 
and  its  own  peculiar  drunkenness — are  quite 
as  important  as  the  mysterious  poison  they 
have  in  common;  and  each  will  demand  sepa- 
rate consideration.  But  for  the  moment — 
at  this  point — my  purpose  is  broader.  I  want 
to  show  what  alcohol  does  to  man;  what  it 
does  to  any  man  and  every  man,  to  you  as 
to  another.  After  all,  the  subject  is  im- 
portant only  because  it  is  personal — because 
the  problem  of  drink  can  be  stated  in  terms  of 
your  personal  relation  to  it. 

IV 

You  have  asked  yourself — if  not  you  are  ask- 
ing yourself  now:  ^'  Is  alcohol  a  good  thing  for 
me?" 


THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE        ii 

Possibly  you  have  made  many  experiments — 
or  one  or  two.  Then  you  have  found — what 
every  man  from  the  honest  scientist  to  the 
thoughtful  barman  finds — that  alcohol  is  not 
a  good  thing  for  you;  in  certain  ascertained 
quantities  being,  in  fact,  a  bad  thing. 

So  the  problem  comes  to  this:  ''How  much 
can  I  take  without  undue  harm?" 

The  question  cannot  be  put  in  a  fairer  way 
— in  a  way  more  scientific  and  less  emotional. 
It  shows  that  you  have  a  practical  mind.  You 
open,  as  it  were,  a  profit  and  loss  account  with 
alcohol.  You  do  not  call  it — as  I  have  heard 
it  called — a  pandemic  plague.  You  do  not 
lie  awake  nights  cursing  the  mycoderma.  You 
go  about  it  in  a  practical  way.  On  one  side 
of  the  account  you  set  down  what  you  lose 
in  moral,  mental  and  physical  ways;  on  the 
other  side  —  with  scrupulous  fairness  —  the 
gains. 

For  there  are  gains. 

Let  us  get  that  matter  clear  once  for  all. 

There  are  gains,  or  humanity  had  not  for 
so  many  ages  drunk  deep — you  had  not  been 
able  tojpok  back  to  the  twilight  of  history 
^nS'^een    (everywhere)    mankind   at  its   cups. 


12  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

Something,  you  know,  these  wine-stained  gen- 
erations gained,  or  they  had  never  paid  the 
bitter  price. 

What  are  the  most  apparent  gains? 

You  set  them  down  as  social  cheer,  as  the 
exhilaration  that  lifts  dull  mortality  to  a  flash- 
ing level,  as  forgetfulness — that  drowsy  forget- 
fulness  of  the  actualities  of  life,  which  is  per- 
haps the  rarest  thing  a  man  can  purchase.  You 
set  them  all  down;  for  you  know  that  not 
every  drinker  seeks  only  physical  and  mate- 
rial drunkenness.  No;  across  a  world  of  piti- 
ful attempts  at  wine-born  merriment,  you  see 
the  poet  seeking  the  blue  flower  of  the  au-dela, 
the  dreamer  hunting  his  dream.  (I  am  not 
embellishing  with  rhetoric  the  drunkard's  vice 
or  taking  away  its  ethical  significance;  for  it 
is  a  sad  and  certain  fact  that  those  who  sought 
the  dream  in  wine  found  the  nightmare — as 
James  Thomson  found  it  in  the  ''  City  of 
Dreadful  Night,"  and  Poe  in  the  ''  Valley  of 
Many-colored  Grass";  but  to  minds  of  this 
order  even  the  visionary  chase  seems  to  be  a 
gain.) 

Set  it  all  down  in  the  account.  What  men 
like  best  about  drinking  in  company,  which  is 


THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE        13 

the  admired  way  to  drink  (^Svho  drinks  Hol- 
lands alone  and  in  a  churchyard")  is  unques- 
tionably the  social  freedom — the  letting  down 
of  bars.  I  do  not  deny  this  gain.  Why  should 
I?  The  bashful  man,  exhilarated  by  alcohol, 
loses  his  nervousness,  the  reticent  man  grows 
frank  and  confidential — it  is  only  at  such  a  mo- 
ment you  learn  his  grandfather  was  hanged; 
in  fact,  in  such  company  life  becomes  free  and 
unbuttoned.  The  historic  example  is  that  of 
Theodore  Hook.  When  he  went  sober  into 
society  he  sat  silent,  shamefaced  and  glum. 
His  second  bottle  set  him  singing,  rhyming, 
playing  the  mimic — an  admirable  wit.  Dis- 
tinctly there  was  a  social  gain  there,  for  it 
made  a  droll,  public  entertainer  out  of  a  bash- 
ful unsocial  man.  Here  the  gain,  as  you  ob- 
serve, is  not  so  much  to  the  man  who  does  the 
drinking  as  it  is  to  his  companions,  who  have 
the  opportunity  of  seeing  him  flash  and  caper 
and  throw  ofif  his  buttoned-up  reserve  of  man- 
ner. Of  course,  a  question  still  to  be  consid- 
ered is  the  price  the  drinker  pays  for  it.  For 
the  time  being  set  it  down:  the  drinking  man 
gains  a  certain  social  cheer — lawless  in  a  way, 
but  indubitably  fascinating  to  the  kind  of  man 


14  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

who  cannot  "  let  himself  go "  when  he  is 
sober.  In  a  deeper  "  mist  of  intoxication/' 
to  use  Thoreau's  phrase,  that  man  "  forgets  his 
troubles  " — not  a  negligible  advantage. 

In  what  you  have  set  down  you  have  summed 
up  the  chief  gains  to  be  got  by  drinking  alco- 
hol, in  this  coaxing  form  or  that. 

It  makes  a  man  bolder  than  he  is  by  nature. 
I  have  always  loved  that  story  of  the  mouse 
who  came  upon  a  little  pool  of  whisky  spilled 
upon  the  floor;  he  drank,  and  once  again;  then 
he  cocked  up  his  head  and  said:  ^'Where's 
that  cat  that  was  chasing  me  yesterday?  " 

I  accept  this  quality  of  boldness  to  be  got 
from  drink,  but  I  would  reluctantly  admit  it 
as  a  social  gain.  Burke,  the  criminal,  who 
gave  his  name  to  a  peculiarly  atrocious  kind 
of  crime,  said  he  got  his  "  courage "  from 
drink;  indeed,  he  had  to  have  a  dram  of  brandy 
before  murdering  a  child.  It  is  an  unde- 
sirable kind  of  courage. — 

(I  know  whereof  I  speak.  I  never  followed 
Burke's  way  of  life,  but  once  upon  a  time  in 
my  green  youth  I  was  a  reporter  on  a  New 
York  newspaper.  One  day  I  was  told  to  inter- 
view   .     He  was  never  a  pleas- 


THE  BLOOM  ON  THE  GRAPE         15 

ant,  forthcoming,  courteous  man  to  the  inter- 
viewer, and  this  day  he  was  singularly  sore- 
headed  and  gruff,  owing  to  a  smashing  political 
defeat. 

"  Go   ask  him,"  said  my  editor,   ^'  what  he 

thinks  of  Senator ," — it  being  the 

hand  of  Senator that  had  knifed  him;  and 

my  editor — who  was  Mr.  Foster  Coates — added 
thoughtfully:  ''You  had  best  put  a  pint  of 
champagne  in  you  first."  I  was  innocent  and 
I  took  his  advice;  also  the  pint.  Unfortu- 
nately the  plan  didn't  work.     When   I   came 

face    to   face   with   Mr.    I    discovered 

— to  my  dismay — that  he  had  taken  two  pints!) 

Gayety  and  social  freedom  and  cheer,  per- 
haps forgetfulness  of  unpleasant  things,  and 
courage  of  a  sort — these,  I  think,  are  the  best 
alcohol  has  to  offer.  They  are  all  tolerably 
agreeable  results.  That  is  why  you  have  set 
them  down  in  your  list  of  alcoholic  gains. 
And  now  the  question  is:  How  does  alcohol 
do  these  things  to  a  man?  Whence  come  the 
glow  of  good  feeling,  the  companionable  frank- 
ness, the  unbuttoned  freedom  of  mood? 

First  of  all— 


CHAPTER  II 
WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN 


And  first  of  all  I  am  not  writing  of  the 
drunkard. 

I  have  in  mind  the  practical  man  you  were 
when  you  drew  up  a  profit  and  loss  account 
with  alcohol;  the  kind  of  man  who  says:  "I 
can  take  an  ounce  of  alcohol  a  day — in  so 
many  glasses  of  beer  or  brandies-and-soda," 
or,  being  a  big,  stark,  healthy  man,  ^'  my  two 
ounces  a  day";  in  other  words,  the  man  out  of 
whose  mouth  comes  the  familiar  quotation: 
^'  Thank  Heaven,  I  can  drink  and  be  sober!  " 

I  am  interested  in  that  man. 

The  teetotal  scientists,  I  know,  draw  horrid 
pictures  of  his  stomach  and  his  hobnailed 
liver.  I  refuse  to  get  excited  over  his  stomach 
and  his  liver.  What  interests  me  is  his  brain, 
for  the  brain — as  near  as  we  can  come  to  it — 
is  the  man.    It  is  the  organ  (and  the  only  one) 

I6 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN     17 

through  which  I  can  get  in  touch  with  that 
strange  thing,  your  Ego — or  you  with  mine. 
There  it  is  I  get  vaguely  at  the  thing  that 
makes  you  Ethelhert  de  Courcy  (if  you  are 
Ethelbert  de  Courcy)  and  not  Vance  Thomp- 
son. It  is  in  the  brain  that  alcohol  produces 
the  effects  whereof  there  has  been  something 
written — the  social  gayety  and  freedom,  the 
memory  blinded  to  the  unpleasant  facts  of  life, 
the  courage  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  So  my  inter- 
est (and  yours,  I  trust)  is  in  what  alcohol  does 
to  this  essential  part  of  man. 

Alcohol  is  intoxicating;  that  is  why  men 
drink  it — and  for  no  other  reason;  and  he  who 
would  get  at  the  root  of  intoxication — its  pleas- 
ure and  pain,  its  peril  and  penalty — must  study 
the  physiological  effects  of  alcohol  on  the 
brain.  There  he  may  read  its  story  and  its 
mystery.  It  is  the  beginning  of  the  entire 
problem  and — no  matter  how  far  afield  one 
fares  into  matters  civic  and  economic — its  end. 

Science,  not  yet  omniscient,  is  content  to 
look  upon  the  brain  as  being  made  up  of  mil- 
lions of  cells,  each  cell  having  two  nerve-fibers 
— one  bringing  to  it  nerve  motion  and  the  other 
conducting  energy  from  it.     Certain  of  the^e 


1 8  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

cells,  having  found  they  had  similar  work  to 
do,  have  formed  a  kind  of  communistic  so- 
ciety. They  group  themselves  and  work  to- 
gether. Endlessly  doing  the  same  thing,  they 
become  identified  with  one  kind  of  work.  So 
you  have  the  speech-group,  for  instance,  which 
attends  to  the  mechanism  of  talking.  These 
groups  are  not  all  of  the  same  age.  They  were 
developed  little  by  little  as  the  varying  needs 
arose.  The  modern  physiologist  thinks  of  them 
as  layer  upon  layer;  this  is  the  theory  of  Func- 
tional Levels.  They  have  been  divided  into 
three  great  levels  or  planes. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  if  you  bear  in  mind 
that  the  oldest  bodily  habits — which  have  now 
become  automatic — belong  to  the  lower  plane. 
Digestion,  growth,  breathing,  blood-circulation 
and  the  like  are  old  established  functions.  The 
nerve-groups  that  control  them  are  buried  deep 
in  the  nervous  system — so  deep  the  will  cannot 
reach  them.  There,  too,  lie  the  groups  that 
feed  the  muscles.    For  example: — 

I  dip  my  pen  in  the  ink.  The  muscles,  as 
I  have  said,  and  their  nutrition,  have  their 
nerve-groups  on  the  lowest  plane.  The  move- 
ment— the  nicely  adjusted  muscular  action  with 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN     19 

which  I  dip  the  pen — has  its  groups  on  the 
middle  plane.  But  the  conception  of  the  move- 
ment, the  idea  of  pen  and  ink  and  the  written 
page  before  me,  have  their  home  on  the  high- 
est level. 

It  is  clear,  is  it  not? 

The  higher  functions  are  on  the  higher  level, 
the  highest  on  the  highest.  This  upper  plane 
was  the  most  recently  acquired  in  evolution. 
Therefore,  it  is  the  least  stable.  It  is  still 
within  the  sphere  of  the  will.  You  may  think 
of  it,  if  you  please,  as  the  physical  basis  of 
character;  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  how 
delicately  complex — how  easily  thrown  out  of 
order — are  these  nervous  processes  which  are 
concerned  in  right  conduct.  The  older  groups 
of  nerve-cells  which  attend  to  ^'  the  automatic 
mechanism  of  the  vital  functions "  are  buried 
deep  in  the  lower  level  and  are  not  easily  per- 
turbed. Those  on  the  highest  plane,  more  re- 
cently acquired,  still  swayed  by  the  will,  deli- 
cate and  complex,  are  always  in  peril. 

And  they  are  not  isolated.  Peril  comes  to  them 
from  every  side;  for  they  are  linked  by  nerve- 
fibers  to  every  other  group  of  cells  on  all  the 
planes.    In  the  exact  words  of  the  physiologist. 


20  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

every  organ  (and  every  function  of  the  body) 
is  triply  represented  in  the  nervous  system — it 
is  represented  on  each  of  the  three  planes.  It 
is  not  difficult  to  imagine  how  extremely  deli- 
cate must  be  the  mechanism  which  co-ordinates 
them.    A  fragile  machine — triply  delicate. 

Now  what  I  would  get  at  is  the  exact  effect 
alcohol  has  upon  it. 

The  man  takes  a  drink.  He  takes  his  bot- 
tle of  wine,  or  his  glass  or  two  or  three  of 
whisky.  A  certain  part  of  the  alcohol  passes 
unchanged  through  the  bodily  system — and  is, 
from  the  drinker's  viewpoint,  economically 
wasted.  The  rest  mingles  with  the  blood  and 
is  carried  through  the  body.  If  you  vivisect 
the  man  who  has  taken  the  drink,  you  will  find 
alcohol  in  all  the  large  organs;  but  chiefly  you 
will  find  it  in  the  nervous  system. 

This  is  a  fierce,  deep  and  tragic  fact. 

There  is  a  sort  of  dark  "  affinity  "  between 
alcohol  and  the  brain-tissue.  They  come  to- 
gether like  cats  in  the  night.  You  will  see  in 
a  moment  the  significance  of  this  fact. 

The  first  effect  of  alcohol  is  on  the  nerve- 
centers,  or  groups,  which  control  and  regu- 
late  the   blood    supply.     That   is   where    the 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN     21 

^'  stimulation  "  comes  in.  The  heart  feels  it;  its 
action  is  hurried.  The  blood-vessels  in  the 
stomach  dilate  and  glow  pleasantly — whereby 
the  man  fancifully  thinks  a  drink  has  warmed 
him  up.  Then  the  brain  gets  the  ^'  stimula- 
tion." The  nervous  processes  are  quickened. 
It  seems  easier  to  think.  There  is  a  sense  of 
bodily  well-being,  for  "  organic  congratula- 
tions "  are  pouring  in  from  the  glowing  blood- 
vessels. This  is  the  physical  effect — the  first 
one — that  makes  men  love  their  wine. 

And  now  the  alcohol,  coursing  through  the 
system,  with  the  blood-elements,  has  reached 
the  brain;  what  does  it  do? 


II 

*'  The  action  induced  in  the  brain  is  of  the 
nature  of  a  progressive  paralysis,  beginning 
with  the  highest  level,  and  its  most  delicate 
functions,  and  spreading  gradually  down 
through  the  lower.  Moral  qualities  and  the 
higher  processes  of  intelligence  are,  therefore, 
first   invaded/' 

And  here  I  have  got  to  the  point  I  wanted 
to  make  in  this  chapter: 


22  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

Alcohol  first  attacks — first,  mark  you,  and 
not  last — the  highest  part  of  man,  his  moral 
nature.  (That  is  why  Burke  drank  brandy 
when  he  would  murder  a  child;  it  was  not,  as 
he  thought,  to  give  himself  ''  courage" — it 
was  to  silence  the  protest  of  whatever  poor 
remnant  of  moral  nature  was  in  him.) 
^From  the  top  down — that  is  the  way  alcohol 
works  on  a  man;  it  destroys  first  what  is  high- 
est in  him — the  moral  qualities  so  painfully 
acquired  in  the  long  years  of  evolution.  It  is 
the  most  delicate  part  of  the  mental  machinery 
that  is  first  impaired — that  which  has  been 
most  recently  and  most  fragilely  built  up  in 
the  evolution  of  character:  the  moral  part. 

Alcohol,  even  in  minute  quantities,  is  intoxi- 
cating— that  is,  it  is  toxic — and  exactly  in  pro- 
portion to  the  quantity  taken  is  the  impairment 
of  the  moral  nature.  Do  not  imagine  that 
this  pleasurable  bodily  glow  and  well-being  of 
distended  blood-vessels,  which  make  for  a 
fatuous  kind  of  altruism,  has  anything  to  do 
with  character.  By  just  so  much  character  is 
impaired.  The  moral  standards  sag  and  sway. 
The  drinking  man,  of  whom  I  write,  has  let 
down  the  bars.     Morally  he  is  a  looser  man. 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN     23 

The  entire  man  on  that  upper  plane  is  loos- 
ened and  unbraced.  The  higher  processes  of 
the  intelligence  will  go  on  with  delicate  preci- 
sion after — and  there,  indeed,  is  the  most  mon- 
strous peril — after  the  moral  faculties  are  dis- 
ordered and  defective.  If  you  have  studied 
the  man  who  drinks;  if  you  have  studied  the 
girl — in  silk  stockings — on  the  porch  of  the 
country  club,  you  know  this  to  be  indubitably 
true.  Always  the  moral  paralysis  is  the  first 
physiological  effect  of  alcohol  on  the  brain. 
From  the  top  downwards. 

You  will  say  it  does  not  greatly  matter  so 
long  as  the  intellect  stands,  in  fact,  on  guard; 
but  it  is  a  physiological  truth  that  the  finer  part 
of  man's  mentality  is  the  next  victim — an  almost 
immediate  victim — of  the  toxic  paralysis.  Sci- 
entific investigators  notice  first  the  loss  of  self- 
control.  There  are  delicate  psychometric  in- 
struments for  measuring  the  loss.  On  the  same 
plane  is  the  associated  group — to  use  the  tech- 
nical jargon — of  judgment  cells.  They  are  next 
invaded.  Now  the  man  who  gets  drunk  goes 
rapidly  through  all  the  stages;  the  restrained 
drinker,  frugal,  more  than  moderate,  passes 
them  more  slowly — taking,   it  may  be,  years; 


24  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

but  always  alcohol  is  doing  the  same  thing  to 
his  brain. 

Theodore  Hook,  when  he  drank  himself  into 
a  state  of  talkative  jollity,  doubtless  put  him- 
self in  about  this  situation.  The  moral  part  of 
him  was  in  abeyance;  his  judgment  was  so  de- 
fective that  he  willingly  made  a  zany  of  him- 
self— with  no  thought  of  self-respect  which 
ordinarily  kept  him  a  quiet  man;  meanwhile 
his  imagination,  still  unaffected,  was  loose  and 
lively.  The  bridle  was  off  it.  It  ran  blithely 
wild.  In  a  little  w^hile  it,  too,  would  run 
down  into  cloudy  confusion.  What  would  be 
still  alive  would  be  the  emotional  nature  of 
the  man — quite  uncontrolled  now  by  the  higher 
mind.  He  would  become  affectionate  and  hug 
his  table  companion;  or  bellicose  and  insult 
him;  or  he  would  weep.  It  is  the  inevitable 
succession  of  events.  The  emotions,  unchecked 
and  unguided,  go  their  own  way.  And  (always 
descending)  the  toxic  paralysis  touches  the 
springs  of  the  will  and  it  sleeps;  until,  in  the 
end,  there  is  left  only  the  animal  man — a  thing 
in  whom  only  the  automatic  functions  of  life 
persist. 

Thus,  rapidly,  I  have  sketched  the  physio- 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN     25 

logical  effects  of  alcohol  upon  the  three  levels 
of  the  brain.  And  you  have  observed  that 
the  highest  qualities  are  first  impaired.  The 
same  law  holds  good  as  you  drop  from  plane 
to  plane,  and  through  each  plane.  Thus  the 
speech-group  functions  on  the  middle  level. 

I  remember  once  sitting  with  Alfred  Henry 
Lewis  in  a  New  York  tavern,  where  we  drank 
water.  He  was  curious  in  the  study  of  hu- 
manity and  he  had  gathered  round  him,  at 
table,  a  company  of  gamblers,  pugilists,  crimi- 
nals, politicians  and  bad  husbands.  I  had 
mentioned  to  him  the  theory  (then  new)  that 
drunkenness  acts  from  above  downwards,  and, 
as  our  company  tippled  away,  we  studied  the 
process  on  the  speech-level.  Almost  all  im- 
proper men  afifect  a  nice  propriety  of  speech — 
notably  the  New  York  type.  At  first  the  con- 
versation was  rather  formal.  Our  guests  were 
respecting  themselves.  Little  by  little  the 
speech  loosened;  it  lost  exactitude.  Words 
were  made  to  do  double  duty.  Then  the  pro- 
nunciation stumbled  and  fell  apart.  The 
spoken  words  were  deformed,  slurred  over, 
maltreated.  The  next  loss  was  in  intonation — 
as  though  the  speaking  voice  were  getting  out 


26  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

of  control.  And  at  last  the  conversation  be- 
came purely  automatic — a  sort  of  emotional 
repetition  of  stock  phrases  and  slang  locu- 
tions, the  mere  parrot  utterance  of  ready-made 
word-combinations  that  required  little  more 
than  muscular  effort. 

Of  course,  the  most  serious  stage  is  reached 
when  the  co-ordination  between  the  three  planes 
is  broken,  but  that  matter  belongs  to  the 
pathology  of  alcoholism.  For  the  moment  our 
concern  is  with  the  brain  of  man  and  what 
alcohol  does  to  it. 

It  first  destroys — or  impairs — what  is  most 
delicate,  most  complex  and  most  important. 

This  is  the  significant  fact  you  have  to  set 
down  against  the  gains  to  be  got  from  alcohol. 
It  is  understood  you  are  not  interested  in  the 
man  with  the  hobnailed  liver  and  the  sodden 
drunkard  who  has  got  to  the  end  of  his  career. 
But  take  the  ounce-or-two-a-day  man.  Take  him 
who  can,  thank  Heaven!  drink  and  be  sober. 
Sobriety  is  a  broad  word.  It  includes  the 
three  planes.  The  body  may  be  sober — that 
is,  normal  enough;  the  emotional  level,  the 
imagination,  even  the  higher  intelligence,  may 
be  unaffected  and  unimpaired;  but  of  no  man, 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN     27 

in  whose  bodily  system  there  is  alcohol  in 
any  degree,  can  it  be  said  that  his  moral  quali- 
ties are  normal.  Good  conduct,  like  every 
other  mental  habit,  must  have  an  organic  basis 
— a  mechanism  of  nerve-cells  and  fibers.  This 
mechanism,  as  you  know,  is  recently  acquired 
in  man  and  is  still  unstable  and  of  extreme 
fragility.  The  alcohol  which  leaves  the  rest 
of  the  man  ''  sober,"  beats  savagely  upon  this 
fragile  mechanism.  Not  perhaps,  but  cer- 
tainly; not  occasionally,  but  always.  The  first 
impairment  is  moral;  the  first  lapse  is  moral; 
for  every  man  who  takes  alcohol  is  drunk  at 
the  top. 

This  degeneration  may  not  immediately  ex- 
press itself  in  immoral  action;  but  you  have 
only  to  wait.  The  moment  the  higher  intel- 
ligence is  touched  in  its  turn  by  the  toxic 
paralysis — when  the  judgment  goes  off  guard, 
and  the  emotions  are  uncontrolled — that  man 
will  break  the  moral  law.  You  can  trust  him 
neither  with  a  purse  or  a  woman  or  an  oath. 
And  if  you  are  that  man,  you  cannot  trust 
yourself.  You  are  drunk  at  the  top.  And  so 
long  as  you  drink  you  can  not  get  morally 
sober,  no  matter  how  well  in  hand  you  keep 


28  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

mind  and  body.  For  every  successive  dose  of 
alcohol  goes  there  first.  And  every  toxic  repe- 
tition increases  the  moral  disaster.  No  matter 
how  sober  he  may  be  from  that  highest  plane 
downward,  the  man  who  drinks  alcohol  is 
morally  defective;  he  may  keep  within  the 
criminal  law  because  his  judgment  tells  him 
to,  or  because  his  passions  do  not  tempt  him 
out  of  it;  but  morally  he  is  impotent — the 
very  organic  basis  of  altruism  and  good  moral 
feeling  in  him  is  destroyed.  It  is  dead  of 
alcoholic  paralysis. 

Set  that  down  in  your  account  of  profit  and 
loss. 

Do  the  gains  seem  especially  attractive  now 
you  know  the  physiological  price — the  mere 
destruction  of  the  nerve-elements — you  are 
called  upon  to  pay? 

Wine  warms  the  cockles  of  the  heart;  it 
clouds  the  brain  with  a  pleasant  mist  wherein 
disagreeable  memories  are  obscured;  it  loosens 
the  reins  of  judgment  and  daring  risks  seem 
paltry  things — life  seems  a  sporting  venture; 
but  the  first  price  to  be  paid  is  a  moral  one. 
What  alcohol  does  first  to  a  man  is  to  poison 
his  moral  nature — to  paralyze  it,  as  the  physi- 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN     29 

ologists  say.  He  is  a  good  fellow,  a  whimsical 
and  jolly  companion,  the  man  who  can,  thank 
Heaven,  drink  and  be  sober.  He  is  sober  in 
body  and  sober  mentally. 

It  is  only  morally  he  is  drunk. 

That  is  the  price  he  pays — stated  with  sci- 
entific precision.  This  is  not  a  new  fact.  Ob- 
scurely the  public  mind  has  always  recognized 
it.  Your  banker  may  not  have  reasoned  the 
matter  out;  but  he  knows  that  the  man  who 
drinks  alcohol — even  the  ounce-a-day  man — is 
morally  impaired  and  he  does  not  set  him 
to  guard  the  strong-box.  Bar  cases  of  moral 
insanity  (which  are  due  to  exactly  the  same 
paralysis  of  the  higher  brain  functions  as  that 
caused  by  alcohol),  it  may  be  broadly  said  that 
the  crimes  of  the  world  are  committed  by  those 
who  have  deformed — by  this  toxic  agent  or 
that  one — the  highest  functional  level.  In 
plain  words:  the  criminal  begins  his  bad  busi- 
ness by  putting  the  moral  man  in  him  to  sleep. 
And  nothing  does  that  so  subtly  and  insidi- 
ously as  alcohol. 

It  is  one  of  the  things  alcohol  does  to  a  man. 


30  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

III 

There  are  other  drugs  that  do  the  same  thing 
alcohol  does  to  a  man.  They  put  to  sleep  the 
higher  functions  of  the  brain  and  break  the 
co-ordination  of  the  three  planes  of  the  brain; 
and,  in  addition,  they  do  it  more  quickly  than 
alcohol  does.  The  inventive  chemists  have  per- 
fected scores  of  these  drugs,  which  act  upon 
the  nervous  system.  The  less  harmful  ones — 
bromides,  for  instance — affect  chiefly  the  mid- 
dle plane,  but  certain  fiercer  poisons  go 
straight  to  the  highest  point  in  man.  Alcohol 
goes  about  its  business  slowly;  it  takes  years, 
it  may  be,  to  do  what  cocaine  does  in  a  flash — 
but  physiologically  it  is  doing  the  same  thing. 
It  is  merely  the  rapidity  of  its  action  which 
makes  the  ''  snow-rider "  take  to  cocaine  in- 
stead of  to  the  leisurely  stimulation  of  whisky. 
He  is  riding  to  the  same  goal.  His  '^  heaven 
dust "  is  quicker  in  its  action  on  the  brain — 
more  rapidly  annihilates  the  moral  impulse  and 
banishes   self-control;   that   is    all. 

Only— 

The  drug-taker  is  usually  a  solitary.  It  is 
not  for  companionship  that  the  opium-smoker 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN    3 1 

goes  to  a  den;  indeed,  in  him  the  very  sources 
and  springs  of  companionship  are  dead;  even 
sex  has  vanished.  It  is  usually  only  in  their 
first,  early  acquaintance  with  the  drug  that 
cocaine-users  meet  in  common  and  sniff  or 
spray  their  nostrils  with  the  '^  coke."  Sooner 
or  later  the  "  snow-rider  "  rides  alone — his  fan- 
tastic ride  to  death.  But  the  immensely  im- 
portant fact  about  alcohol  is  that  it  makes  for 
a  kind  of  sociability.  There  is  no  blinking 
this  truth.  It  is  not  one  of  the  mere  hypocri- 
sies of  drink — like  the  wine-drinker's  parade 
of  connoisseurship.     It  is  a  fact. 

I  have  shown  the  physiological  basis  for  the 
glow  and  comfort  that  comes  from  alcohol — 
a  reflex  effect  from  the  excitation  of  the  nerve- 
endings  in  the  mouth  and  stomach,  which 
makes  for  a  sense  of  well-being.  You  may 
safely  say  this  lies  at  the  basis  of  the  drinker's 
desire  for  companionship.  He  is  momentarily 
at  peace.  His  physical  body  whispers  con- 
gratulations. Mentally,  too,  he  is  loosened  up 
and  emotionally  he  is  excited.  He  would  fain 
talk;  and  he  looks  about  him  for  someone  to 
talk  with. 

And  with  whom? 


32  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

When  you  have  answered  this  question  you 
will  have  got  at  the  essence  of  alcoholic  com- 
panionship. 

In  an  early  stage  of  drinking — almost  from 
the  beginning — a  desire  to  talk  is  as  auto- 
matic and  imperative  as  a  natural  vital  func- 
tion. Moreover,  discrimination  and  judgment 
being  blurred,  a  man  does  not  greatly  care 
whom  he  talks  with.  His  speech-centers  are 
excited  and  they  must  function.  He  must  talk, 
even  if  he  has  to  talk  to  his  wife  or  to  the 
barmen.  But  wives  and  barmen  are  generally 
sober  folk  and  soon  weary  of  him.  So  in- 
evitably he  goes  to  his  kind.  There  you  have 
the  reason  why  men  drink  in  clubs  and  bar- 
rooms and  not  (like  Gabriel  Grub)  ^^  alone  and 
in  a  churchyard." 

This  habit  of  getting  together  to  drink  has 
been  decorated  with  an  immense  amount  of 
flummery.  The  basic  physical  need  for  ex- 
pression— expansion — has  been  so  tricked  out 
in  social  prettinesses  that  at  first  glance  one 
cannot  recognize  it.  It  is  like  the  gypsy  wench 
Roderick  Random  dressed  up  in  silks  and  took 
into  court  circles.  If  an  accurate  physiological 
analysis   of  just  what   alcohol  is   doing   to   a 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN    33 

merry  group  of  ladies  and  gentlemen  at  a 
supper-table  were  drawn  up  and  printed  on 
the  back  of  the  wine-card,  you  would  have  a 
clearer  idea  of  what  all  the  friendly  chatter 
of  your  guests  really  means. 

And  yet  you  can  never  get  at  the  heart  of 
the  drink  problem  until  you  have  cleared 
away  the  cant  of  social  companionship.  Dr. 
Johnson,  talking  of  "  in  vino  Veritas,"  said  he 
would  not  foregather  with  the  kind  of  man 
who  had  to  be  got  drunk  in  order  that  the 
truth  might  be  extracted  from  him.  In  much 
the  same  way  it  may  be  said  that  the  ideal 
companion  is  not  the  man  (or  woman)  whose 
social  charm  depends  upon  a  greater  or  less 
degree   of    alcoholic    paralysis. 

Yet  the  charm  is  there. 

It  is  perishable;  it  lasts  but  a  little  while; 
but  unquestionably  it  is  there.  I  believe  that 
most  men  and  boys  take  to  drink  for  the  sake 
of  it.  None  of  them  ever  took  a  first  drink 
for  the  flavor  or  taste  of  it.  (Even  from  new 
wine  a  child  will  turn;  for  it  is  an  old  law  of 
nature  that  all  hurtful  things  are  repulsive.) 
Boy  or  man,  he  took  that  first  drink  for  social 
reasons — and    against   the   grain.     He   took   it 


34  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

out  of  an  imitative  impulse  to  do  as  others 
were  doing,  or  a  desire  to  get  into  the  same 
loose-buttoned  state  of  light-boasting  assertive- 
ness  and  irresponsibility.  He,  too,  wanted  to 
loosen  up,  get  the  higher  man  out  of  the  way 
and  let  the  lower  emotional  man — with  his 
friendly  caperings  and  tail-waggings — strut  for 
a  while  in  the  light. 

Alcoholic  companionship,  like  alcoholic 
friendship,  belongs  to  the  lower  level;  at  its 
highest  it  does  not  get  above  the  emotional 
plane;  at  its  commonest  it  is  on  the  physical. 

It  is  always  selfish,  because  it  is  always 
based  on  the  desire  a  paraitre — to  display  one's 
own  engaging  personality.  And  the  social 
charm  (which  clings,  one  must  admit,  to  the 
drinking  habit)  exists  only  for  those  who  are 
at  precisely  the  same  degree  of  alcoholic  ex- 
citement or  paralysis.  It  is  not  only  true 
that  the  sober  man — sober  on  the  three  planes 
— gets  no  persistent  enjoyment  out  of  the  com- 
pany of  those  who  are  not  as  he  is;  it  is  also 
true  that  the  man  who  has  had  his  three 
ounces  is  out  of  harmony  with  a  one-ounce 
man.  You  get  social  accord  only  among  those 
who   are   approximately  at   pretty   nearly   the 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN    35 

same  state  of  alcoholic  poisoning.  Therefore 
it  is  that  society  has  drawn  hard  and  fast 
rules  round  the  drink  habit.  It  is  bad  form — 
it  means  ostracism — not  to  drink  and  be  sober 
in  a  certain  grade  of  society.  One  must  take 
one's  wine  at  table,  or  one's  whisky-and-soda 
in  the  billiard-room,  or  one's  gin  and  water 
before  going  to  bed,  in  a  moderate  and  deco- 
rous way.  In  other  words,  in  really  nice 
society  it  is  considered  improper  to  befuddle 
all  three  functional  levels  of  the  brain  at  once. 
So  the  rule  is:  Get  drunk  on  top — on  that 
plane  where  the  fine  moral  standards  of  good 
conduct  have  been  perfected  in  the  years;  but 
keep  sober  on  the  middle  level — where  the 
speech-function  has  its  home;  and,  above  all, 
do  not  paralyze  the  lowest  level  which  keeps 
in  order  the  automatic  functions  of  the  body. 
This  is  the  rule  in  the  kind  of  society  a  decent 
man  can  go  about  in.  One  may  unbutton 
morally;  but  the  mental  unbuttoning — the 
physical  sprawling  of  unbraced  muscles — is 
not  at  all  a  nice  thing  and  leads  ultimately 
to  being  thrown  out  of  doors. 

It   is   in   this   society — and   at  this   stage   of 
alcoholic  impairment — that  the  social  charm  of 


36  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

drink  is  most   apparent   and   indeed   is   at  its 
best. 

Why  does  an  attractive  woman  seem  for 
the  moment — thus  flushed  and  liberated  by 
alcohol — the  more  attractive  to  a  certain  order 
of  intellect?  It  is  because  she  is  indeed  free. 
She  is  freed  from  the  old  moral  law  of  her 
being.  The  guardian,  who  makes  his  home 
on  the  highest  brain-level,  is  drugged  and 
asleep.  All  the  other  qualities  of  the  woman 
flash  out,  rejoicing  in  the  new-found  liberty. 
The  mind  tastes  the  sudden  joys  of  lawless- 
ness. The  emotional  nature  laughs  and  takes 
the  air.  And  what  you  see  is  the  real  female 
animal,  which  is  a  strangely  wonderful  thing. 
Here  it  is — frank  as  sunlight  or  running  wa- 
ter. And  you  watch  it  as  you  would  a  slim, 
wild  colt  at  play  in  a  meadow.  Riderless  it 
runs,  without  bit  or  bridle.  And  makes  for 
fascination.  Do  you  wonder  men  look  at  it 
with  approval,  in  that  one  glad  hour  of  its 
lawlessness?  This  is  no  longer  woman,  aspir- 
ing to  perfect  the  higher  part  of  her  nature — 
working  consciously  on  the  upper  level,  or,  it 
may  be,  merely  yielding  to  atavistic  impulses 
toward  right  conduct;  she  is  the  female  animal, 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN    37 

living  downward,  beautiful  and  unaware  of 
sin,  as  a  thing  that  runs  lightly  in  the  forest. 

Social  charm? 

Of  course  it  is  there;  but  it  is  there  only  for 
the  man  who  has  put  himself  (like  Theodore 
Hook)  in  approximately  the  same  untrammeled 
state.  For  both  of  them — for  him  and  for 
her — alcohol  must  have  abolished  the  higher 
faculties  and  moods,  if  they  are  to  find  a  com- 
mon pleasure  in  companionship. 

iv: 

Quicquid  agunt  homines — 

All  that  is  done  by  men  in  drink — revels 
of  the  voluptuous,  festivals  of  triumph,  gladia- 
torship  of  the  wit — has  never  wanted  someone 
to  praise  it.  No  one  in  our  day  praises  it  so 
lustily  as  Mr.  Gilbert  K.  Chesterton;  no  one 
is  so  eloquent  an  apologist  for  the  life  that 
is  neither  sweet  nor  reasonable,  being  indeed 
tumultuous,  riotous  and  full  of  mirth.  He 
finds  in  drink,  as  others  have,  a  blazing  ele- 
ment of  excitement — as  though  it  made  men 
sons  of  the  gods,  summoned  to  a  high  festival. 
And  in  verse  and  prose  he  has  proclaimed  the 


38  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

essential  virtue  of  strong  drink,  which  is  the 
virtue  of  placing  men  on  a  democratic  level 
of  boon-fellowship.  If  this  were  true — even 
though  the  level  were  a  low  one — there  might 
still  be  a  saving  truth  in  the  argument.  But 
the  altruistic  plea  is  (as  you  have  seen)  merely 
one  of  the  hypocrisies  which  have  grown  up 
round  the  drink  habit.  All  poison  habits  (your 
physician  will  tell  you)  are  progressive.  For 
the  man  who  drank  yesterday  there  is  dis- 
comfort in  abstinence  today.  It  is  always  true; 
it  is  a  rule  of  life;  the  repetition  of  a  process 
in  which  you  find  pleasure  tends  to  become 
less  and  less  voluntary.  The  will  gets  out 
of  its  way.  The  nervous  mechanism  acts  of 
its  own  accord  and  becomes,  as  it  were,  auto- 
matic. Indeed,  it  becomes  so  automatic  that 
desire  itself  sinks  out  of  sight  and  an  irrele- 
vant pretext  takes  its  place.  And  the  man 
who  tippled  yesterday  will  tell  you  he  has 
no  desire  to  drink  to-day;  not  at  all;  what  he 
wants  (he  avers)  is  boon-companionship.  The 
force  of  habit  is  on  him,  but  he  knows  it  not. 
What  he  thinks  he  wants  is  the  fellowship  of 
Davidson,  Pratt  and  Bennett,  with  whom  he 
tippled    at   his    club.      He    has    read    himself 


WHAT  ALCOHOL  DOES  TO  THE  MAN    39 

awrong.  He  has  deceived  himself.  He  has 
misinterpreted  a  plain  physiological  impulse 
into  a  social  want.  What  he  really  wants  to 
do  is  to  abate  the  physical  discomfort,  due  to 
an  unsatisfied,  automatic  demand  of  the  body 
for  the  poison  it  has  come  to  need.  The  boon- 
fellowship  of  drinking  men  and  women  is  a 
lie.  It  is  the  excuse  for  drink  and  not  the 
cause.  Drink  does  not  make  for  altruism. 
On  the  contrary,  it  sets  up  a  pathological 
process  which  gradually  destroys  altruism.  If 
you  glance  ahead  at  the  man  who  has  got  be- 
yond his  ounce  a  day,  you  can  see  the  way 
the  road  is  trending.  In  the  drunkard  the  rule 
of  being  is  selfishness;  he  will  sacrifice  every- 
thing worth  while  in  life  for  the  sake  of 
drink.  A  prattler  and  a  liar,  he  is  above  all 
a  man  in  whom  selfishness  is  supreme. 

But  the  beggar,  you  say,  turns  first  to  the 
drunken  man?  Barrooms  and  saloons  are 
haunted  by  the  lassies  of  the  Salvation  Army 
and  the  pale  nuns,  questing  charity?  And  the 
"generosity"  of  the  drunkard  is  proverbial? 
It  is  not  altruism.  Two  things  enter  into  it: 
the  drinker's  desire  of  display  and  the  sheer 
lack  of  judgment  which  makes  him  give  away 


40  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

the  very  money  he  needs  for  his  drink.  Not 
altruism,  then,  but  imbecility. 

These  things,  therefore,  alcohol  does  to  a 
man  on  the  higher  levels  of  him.  Your  most 
moderate  drinker  is  poisoned  at  the  top.  Al- 
ready his  morals  are  in  retreat. 

I  am  interested  in  that  man — the  moderate 
drinker;  and  I  want  to  follow  him  for  awhile. 


CHAPTER  III 
THE  MODERATE  DRINKER 


You  may  have  met  this  important  person, 
the  moderate  drinker.  In  the  discussion  of 
the  good  and  ill  of  alcohol,  no  one  is  more 
conspicuous.  A  library  of  books  has  been 
written  about  him.  He  is  the  whetstone  of 
every  argument.  There  was  never  an  old 
family  physician  who  sang  the  praise  of  wine 
and  abused  the  ''  unscientific  twaddle  "  of  the 
enemies  of  alcohol  who  could  not  tell  you 
of  an  esteemed  uncle  who  lived  ^'  to  be  within 
four  months  of  a  hundred  "  and  "  never  drank 
less  than  a  bottle  of  port  every  day  of  his 
life."  That  old  gentleman  is  the  famous  mod- 
erate drinker.  I  have  met  him  in  many  lands. 
Sometimes  he  is  indeed  old;  usually  he  is 
young;  but  there  is  one  extraordinary  thing 
about  him — always  he  is  going  downstairs. 
Always   he   is   getting   away   from   that   ideal 

41 


42  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

state  of  his;  and,  if  you  meet  him  to-morrow 
or  the  next  month  or  the  next  year,  he  has 
ceased  to  be,  in  some  appreciable  degree,  as 
moderate  a  drinker.  This  is  not  an  assump- 
tion.   It  is  a  fact. 

I  knew  a  learned  old  man  in  Scotland;  1 
knew  him  for  many  years.  With  unfailing 
regularity  he  took  his  bottle  a  day — but  it  was 
a  quart  bottle  of  whisky.  In  the  afternoon 
he  used  to  jog  round  his  estate  on  a  safe 
pony;  and  when  day  faded  out  he  would  come 
into  dinner  and  his  third  drink.  One  dined 
well  in  his  house,  and  when  the  cloth  was 
taken  away  the  servants  were  called  in — from 
stables,  gardens  and  offices — and  the  old  man 
read  prayers.  Then  the  bottle  of  whisky  and 
a  jug  of  water  were  set  before  him  and,  filling 
his  glass,  he  began  his  moderate  drinking.  If 
he  had  a  guest,  he  had  another  bottle  for  the 
guest — he  stood  for  no  poaching  on  his.  So 
he  drank.  He  had  a  rare  fund  of  talk,  for  in 
his  youth  he  had  been  a  student  and  a  traveler; 
and  always  he  read  books  worth  discussing. 
Hour  after  hour  I  have  listened  to  his  talk, 
as,  automatically,  his  memory  gave  up  what 
had  been  impressed  upon  it.     He  had  a  hard- 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  43 

surfaced,  Scottish  memory  that  had  retained 
much  he  had  learned  from  men  and  things. 
It  would  be  eleven  o'clock  before  the  intel- 
ligence went  out  of  him;  always  at  midnight 
the  gardener  and  one  of  the  house-servants 
carried  him  up  and  put  him  in  his  bed.  He 
was  a  moderate  drinker.  A  score  of  times 
he  proved  it  to  me — ^with  many  fine  quota- 
tions from  his  Latin  authors.  This  was  the 
way  of  his  argument: — 

"  There  is  only  one  bad  thing  about  drink 
— the  fact  that  the  habit  grows  on  you.  Now 
in  order  to  drink  with  safety,  convenience  and 
delight,  all  you  have  to  do  is  to  see  that  the 
habit  does  not  grow  on  you.  The  man  who 
sets  a  limit — whether  it  be  one  glass  or  one 
bottle — and  keeps  within  his  limit,  is  a  mod- 
erate drinker.  He  stays  at  that  one  point.  I 
call  him,"  said  the  old  Scottish  gentleman, 
"  a  moderate  drinker.  He  does  not  go  beyond 
the  limit  of  moderation  he  has  set  for  himself. 
He  is  drinking  the  whisky — it  is  not  drinking 
him." 

I  used  to  think  it  was  a  good  argument;  I 
still  think  it  is  a  good  argument.  The  man 
who  says:  "I  will  drink  so  much" — glass  or 


44  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

mug,  pint  or  quart — and  sticks  resolutely  to 
the  determination  is,  one  would  fancy,  a  mod- 
erate drinker.  His  will  is  not  yet  destroyed. 
At  some  point  it  steps  in  and  asserts  itself, 
with  its:  ^^  Stop  here — this  is  your  limit." 

But  there  is  one  weak  place  in  the  argu- 
ment— a  fatal  flaw  in  the  logic.  Alcoholism 
proceeds  along  two  roads.  The  first  is  the 
tendency  of  the  poison-habit  to  demand  larger 
doses.  Assume,  if  you  will,  that  the  moderate 
drinker  places  a  barrier  across  this  road,  dis- 
plays the  sign  of:  "  Thus-far-and-no-further." 
He  will  drink  only  so  much  and  not  a  gill  or 
thimbleful  more.  And  thus  he  takes  his  stand 
at  a  fixed  point  in  the  downgoing  road — the 
point  of  moderation.  What  he  overlooks  is 
the  significant  fact  that  alcoholism  has  another 
way  of  getting  to  him.  The  brain-tissues  of 
the  man,  the  nerve-centers,  are  not  what  they 
were  when  he  began  his  moderate  drinking. 
They  have  been  progressively  impaired.  Mor- 
ally, mentally  and  physically  he  has  become 
less  and  less  the  man  he  was,  as  each  dose 
of  alcohol  was  sent  to  do  its  work  on  the  nerv- 
ous system.  He  drinks  no  more,  but  the  drink 
acts  upon  weakened   and   degenerated   tissues. 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  45 

Honestly  and  willfully  he  has  kept  to  a  stated 
moderate  quantity  of  alcohol,  but  meanwhile, 
and  with  steady  progression,  the  sensitive  body, 
into  which  he  pours  the  drink,  has  advanced 
in  alcoholic  dissolution.  What  was  moderation 
yesterday  is  not  moderation  to-day. 

And  here  we  have  touched  the  edge  of  a 
great  truth. 

Moderate  drinking  is  a  stage;  it  is  not  a  fixed 
point.  As  the  French  soldier  would  say,  it  is 
an  etape.  There  is  no  moderate  drinker  who 
is  not  going  on  to  the  next  stage  of  his  journey, 
or  who  is  not  turning  back.  The  New  York 
Sun,  in  one  of  those  sane  and  witty  editorials 
of  which  it  has  the  secret,  says  the  ''  evils  of 
moderate  drinking  have  not  been  established 
to  the  satisfaction  of  any  but  a  few  reformers," 
but  it  takes  the  iron  out  of  the  statement  by 
adding:  ^' What  does  seem  to  be  pretty  well 
established  is  that  few  of  those  who  drink  can 
be  classed  as  moderate  drinkers." 

Few,  or  you  might  say,  none;  for  the  mod- 
erate drinker  is  either  coming  or  going.  He 
is  coming  back  toward  the  norm  of  sobriety, 
or  he  is  going  on  toward  drunkenness.  One 
or  the  other.     The  pathological  progress  to- 


46  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

ward  alcoholic  degenerations  is  continuous;  it 
goes  regularly  on,  though  the  drinking  man 
holds  himself  grimly  to  his  one  bottle  a  day. 
And  he  reaches  the  same  end,  though  not  so 
quickly,  as  he  who  drinks  with  careless,  hope- 
less immoderation.  The  moderate  drinker 
takes  his  tipple  at  a  half-way  house.  His  safety 
lies  in  the  hope — spes  vinosa — that  death 
will  get  him  before  he  goes  further  on  his 
journey. 

By  temperament  and  by  social  convention 
there  are  many  men  and  women — more  than 
the  Sun  fancies,  perhaps — who  seemingly  halt 
at  this  half-way  house.  They  are  those  who 
have  no  predisposition  to  alcoholism;  who  have 
no  desire  for  cerebral  stimulation;  whose  mod- 
eration is  so  definite  that  the  bodily  habit  is 
in  its  infancy.  They  may  go  on  for  a  long 
time,  even  to  old  age,  and  keep  the  poison 
habit  at  so  low  a  point  that  slight  daily  doses 
may  satisfy  it.  I  think  there  are  many  such 
people  in  whom  the  progress  of  the  alcohol 
habit  is  so  leisurely  that  mind  and  body  go 
to  the  grave  less  deeply  scarred  than  one  would 
fancy;  but  what  is  impaired  is  the  finer  brain 
atop — the  home  of  the  moral  qualities.     That 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  47 

price  the  most  moderate  drinker  pays.  His 
moral  deterioration  is  very  subtle;  in  a  world 
where  right  conduct  is  still  an  unachieved 
ideal  it  is  not  notoriously  perceptible;  but, 
great  or  small,  it  is  the  price  he  pays. 


II 

After  all,  what  is  a  moderate  drinker? 

The  "  navvy's  "  moderation  in  gin-drinking 
is  not  that  of  the  college  don  sipping  his  port. 
Bernard  Shaw  has  pointed  out  that  as  ''  most 
people  seem  to  prefer  the  boozy  sort  of  life  " 
so  '^  society  is  organized  to  suit  boozy  people." 
The  doctors  have,  for  the  most  part,  fallen 
in  with  society's  ways;  hence  their  estimate 
of  what  is  moderation  in  the  drinking  of  fer- 
mented liquors  is  anything  but  niggardly.  For 
years  they  regulated  the  daily  allowance  of 
alcohol — for  the  moderate  drinker — by  what 
was  called  ^'  Anstie's  limit." 

According  to  Anstie,  the  right  quantity  is 
"  equivalent  to  one  and  a  half  ounces  of  alco- 
hol; three  ounces  of  ardent  spirit;  two  wine- 
glasses of  port;  one  pint  bottle  of  claret,  cham- 
pagne or  other  light  wine;  three  tumblerfuls 


48  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

of  ale  or  porter;  or  four  or  five  glasses  of  light 
ale  or  beer." 

The  life  insurance  offices  used  to  accept  this 
calculation.  Only  when  Anstie's  amount  was 
exceeded  did  they  see  a  risk  to  health.  Those 
were  the  days  when  doctors  talked  (cheerily 
ignorant)  of  alcohol  as  a  '^  food."  Never  did 
the  moderate  drinker  stand  so  high  in  the 
world's  esteem.  Indeed,  the  total  abstainer  was 
looked  upon  as  a  maniac  who  was  playing  a 
dangerous,  suicidal  game  with  his  health.  One 
of  these  obstinate  non-drinkers,  a  Quaker,  ap- 
plied to  an  English  life  insurance  office  for  a 
policy.  The  directors  held  a  meeting;  the 
learned  doctors  were  called  in;  and  this  was 
the  decision:  the  policy  would  be  granted 
only  if  the  Quaker  paid  ten  per  cent,  more 
than  the  ordinary  premium,  because  ^'  he  was 
thin  and  watery  and  mentally  cranked  in  that 
he  repudiated  the  good  things  of  God  as 
found  in  alcoholic  drinks."  This  was  in  1840; 
life  insurance  was  a  new  thing,  based  on 
the  general  average  of  medical  and  finan- 
cial ignorance.  (The  Quaker  annoyed 
the  prophets  by  living  until  he  was  eighty- 
two.) 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  49 

In  the  three-quarters  of  a  century  that  have 
elapsed  something  has  been  learned.  A  con- 
vention of  the  Presidents  of  the  American  life 
insurance  companies  was  held  in  New  York 
in  1914  and  the  chairman  of  the  Central  Bu- 
reau of  Medico-Actuarial  Mortality  Investi- 
gation, representing  forty-three  companies  and 
covering  the  records  of  over  two  million  policy- 
holders, made  a  report  in  which  he  classed 
moderate  drinkers  as  ^'  decidedly  unsafe  and 
exhibiting  a  higher  mortality  than  total 
abstainers." 

Of  course;  the  physiologist  could  have  told 
him  so  in  the  beginning;  but  it  took  seventy- 
four  years  of  investigation — economic,  socio- 
logical, medical,  ethical — to  convince  the 
Medico-Actuarial  man  of  the  plain  fact  that 
alcohol,  even  in  minute,  moderate  quantities, 
is  a  destructive  poison. 

So  long  as  medical  science — so  long  as  the 
old-fashioned  doctor,  living  hazily  ^'  the  boozy 
sort  of  life " — gave  approval  to  moderate 
drinking  and  ''  Anstie's  limit,"  the  reformers 
had  a  hard  time  of  it.  Business  life,  as  well 
as  social  life,  was  ^^  organized  to  suit  boozy 
people."     Now  you  are  not  going  to  destroy 


50  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

the  pandemic  plague — if  you  want  to  call  it 
that — of  alcohol  until  you  get  both  the  social 
organization  and  the  business  world  on  your 
side.  What  was  most  vehemently  done  in  the 
past  was  to  attack  the  alcohol  habit  on  its 
social  side.  There  has  been  an  immense 
amount  of  emotional  eloquence  poured  out  on 
the  evil  wrought  by  alcohol  upon  the  social 
structure.  That  was  good  work  in  its  way. 
Pictures  of  the  drunkard's  home — its  squalor 
and  cruelty — doubtless  frightened  many  a  man 
from  drink.  And  photographs  (displayed  on 
a  screen)  of  the  moderate  drinker's  indecent 
liver  did  something  to  turn  men  to  sober, 
euthenic  ways  of  living.  But  the  battle  against 
alcohol  could  not  be  won  in  this  way.  You 
cannot  fight  a  poison  habit  with  rhetoric  or 
with  pictures  on  a  screen.  You  cannot  frighten 
a  man  away  from  a  social  peril  by  appealing 
to  his  sense  of  fear.  The  best  and  starkest 
kind  of  man  goes  forward  to  meet  the  fear 
and  put  it  to  the  test.  Youth  is  not  to  be 
daunted  by  a  picture  of  the  hobnailed 
liver.  You  cannot  terrorize  a  boy — in  the 
forth-going  valor  of  his  youth — with  proph- 
ecies of  the  madhouse  or  the  cell.     He  knows 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  51 

he  is  not  going  there;  he  has  taken,  he 
would  tell  you,  the  safe  road  of  the  moderate 
drinker. 

It  was  not  until  ^'  big  business " — cold- 
blooded, unsentimental,  mathematical,  rigidly 
scientific — stepped  in  and  told  him  that  mod- 
erate drinking  was  not  safe,  being,  in  the 
Medico-Actuarial  phrase,  '^  decidedly  unsafe," 
that  he  was  content  to  listen.  Then  he  said: 
^^  There  must  be  something  in  it." 

You  can  see  him  going  jauntily  into  the  life 
insurance  office. 

"  It's  all  right,"  he  says  confidently,  "  I'm 
a  moderate  drinker — I  can  drink  and  be 
sober — in  fact,  I  keep  well  within  Anstie's 
limit." 

^^  Anstie's  limit,"  says  the  Medico-Actuarial 
one  scornfully — ^^  that  belongs  to  the  dark  ages 
of  medical  science,  to  a  period  when  society 
was  organized  to  suit  boozy  people.  Let's  have 
a  look  at  you!  " 

And  with  phlegmatic  immodesty  Medico- 
Actuarial  science  goes  through  him  with  a 
lighted  candle — peering  at  his  lungs  and  lights 
and  liver,  at  heart  and  brain — notably  at  the 
brain   and   its   functional   levels;   then   throws 


52  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

him  out  or  bets  (in  terms  of  insurance)  that 
he  will  live  so  many  alcoholic  years  and  no 
more.  I  am  assuming  that  this  young  man 
was  not  in  an  extra-hazardous  way  of  life. 
Had  he  belonged  to  the  following  classes 
he  had  never  got  so  far  as  the  examination 
room,  in  the  more  conservative  insurance 
offices : 

'^  Retail  liquor  dealers — not  accepted. 

^'  Employees  in  distilleries — not  accepted. 

"  Saloon-keepers  and  bartenders — not  ac- 
cepted. 

''  Traveling  salesmen  for  liquor  houses — not 
accepted. 

^'  Only  in  special  cases  are  wholesale  dealers 
and  restaurant  keepers,  who  sell  liquor,  ac- 
cepted." 

And  the  list  might  be  extended,  for  brewery 
salesmen,  collectors,  mechanics,  bottlers,  labor- 
ers and  the  like  are  heavily  penalized  when 
they  take  out  life-insurance  policies. 

In  the  report  of  the  Bureau  of  Mortality 
Investigation  to  which  I  have  referred  (it 
was  published  in  the  Outlook)  this  state- 
ment is  made,  concerning  the  moderate 
drinker: 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  53 

"With  regard  to  men  who  had  used  alco- 
holic beverages  daily,  but  not  to  excess,  the 
experience  of  the  companies  was  divided  into 
two  groups:  (a)  men  who  took  two  glasses 
of  beer,  or  a  glass  of  whisky,  or  their  equiva- 
lent a  day;  (b)  men  who  took  more  than  the 
foregoing  amount,  but  were  not  considered  by 
the  companies  to  drink  to  excess.  The  mor- 
tality in  the  second  group  was  fifty  per  cent, 
greater  than  in  the  first." 

Here  you  get  a  comparison  between  two 
classes  of  drinkers — both  moderate,  both  within 
the  risk  limits  set  by  the  company;  yet  the 
man  who  took  a  few  extra  glasses,  beer  or 
whisky,  paid  for  it,  on  an  average,  with  four 
years  of  his  life.  These  are  interesting  facts 
and  they  are  significant  because  they  are  those 
upon  which  "  big  business  " — as  you  shall  see 
— has  based  its  campaign  against  drink.  A 
comparison  between  the  moderate  drinker — for 
no  other  drinker  is,  of  course,  accepted  by  the 
insurance  offices — and  the  abstainer,  is  found 
in  the  reports  of  the  British  companies,  which 
I  take  from  the  same  source. 

Here  are  the  figures  for  the  moderate  drink- 
ing men: 


54  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

Total  number  of  years  of  exposure  to 

risk,  all  ages   466,943 

Expected  deaths  by  Om  table 8,91 1 

Actual  deaths   8,947 

Per  cent,  of  actual  to  expected 100.4 

And  here  are  those  for  the  abstainers: 

Total  number  of  years  of  exposure  to 

risk   398,010 

Expected  deaths  by  Om  table 6,899 

Actual  deaths   5?  124 

Per  cent,  of  actual  to  expected 74.3 

What  was  the  scientific  expectation?  Of 
the  moderate  drinkers  8,911  were  due  to  die; 
they  paid  in  36  lives  more  than  were  ex- 
pected. On  the  other  hand,  6,899  abstainers 
were  statistically  expected  to  die;  and  1,775 
simply  refused  to  keep  the  appointment — and 
went  on  living.  You  can  figure  it  out;  the 
differences  between  the  percentages  of  actual 
deaths  to  expected  deaths,  as  between  drink- 
ers and  non-drinkers,  was  21.6  per  cent.;  the 
death-rate  for  drinkers  was  35  per  cent, 
higher  than  it  was  for  non-drinkers — which 
makes  for  thought.  On  an  average  the  mod- 
erate drinker  pays  from  ten  to  thirteen  years  of 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  55 

his  life  for  the  pleasure  he  gets  out  of  his 
small  tipples  of  beer  or  wine  or  whisky. 

Thus  speaks  Medico-Actuarial  science,  cold- 
blooded, stating  the  statistical  facts. 

As  I  have  said,  their  interest,  for  me,  lies  in 
the  discovery  that  ^^  big  business  "  has  pond^ed 
them  to  some  purpose. 

Ill 

Whether  *^  big  business  "  is  cold-blooded  or 
not  is  beside  the  point.  It  is  certainly  scien- 
tific. What  it  tries  to  do,  with  scientific  accu- 
racy and  mathematical  exactness,  is  to  get  the 
best  it  can  out  of  man  and  machine.  Mr. 
Henry  Ford,  a  prominent  manager  for  '^  big 
business,"  says  that  he  looks  upon  '^  the  man  as 
tremendously  more  important  than  the  ma- 
chine." 

Altruism?  Possibly.  But  you  are  not  to 
take  the  word  altruism  in  its  frothier  and  more 
sentimental  sense.  Mr.  Ford  is  one  of  those 
entirely  sane  men,  "  functioning " — to  quote 
the  psychologist — "  with  perfect  co-ordination 
upon  all  the  three  brain-levels."  He  is  sane 
on  top  and  for  such  a  man  moral  sanity  shows 


S6  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

itself  in  respect  for  human  life  and  sympathy 
with  human  suffering.  It  is  a  need  of  his 
altruistic  nature  to  set  the  man  above  the  ma- 
chine. Therefore,  when  one  of  his  laborers 
goes  wrong,  he  does  not  throw  him  out  on  the 
trash-heap  of  life.  He  does  for  the  human 
machine  what  he  would  do  for  the  thing  of 
copper  and  steel;  he  calls  in  experts  who  do 
their  best  to  set  it  right.  When  a  man  in 
the  Ford  factories  is  found  to  be  out  of  order 
from  having  absorbed  alcoholic  poison — or 
fiercer  drugs — he  is  sent  to  a  repair  shop  and 
refitted  for  use.  As  you  suggested,  Mr.  Ford's 
original  impulse  may  have  been  altruistic;  but 
I  am  inclined  to  think  he  finds  it  good  busi- 
ness. A  workman  trained  to  his  work  is  worth 
saving,  just  as  it  is  folly  to  "  scrap  "  a  machine 
when  there  is  still  efficiency  in  it. 

Of  course,  any  manufacturer  would  prefer 
machines  that  did  not  need  tinkering;  and 
sooner  or  later  the  defective  one  will  be  cast 
aside.  For  a  while,  however,  it  is  worth  re- 
pairing; it  repays  the  infinite  care  expended 
on  it.  And  what  is  true  of  the  complicated 
machine  is  true,  in  a  higher  degree,  of  the 
trained   workman.      Yet    the    time    comes    in- 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  57 

evitably,  when  the  warped  and  dirt-clogged  ma- 
chine is  ^'  scrapped  " — the  warped  and  poisoned 
man  thrown  on  the  trash-heap. 

The  moderate  drinker,  who  shortens  his 
working-life  from  ten  to  thirteen  years,  is  not 
a  good  economic  investment.  That  is  what 
'^  big  business  "  has  discovered.  And  in  spite 
of  their  sane  and  humane  desire  to  help  the 
under-dog — to  make  efficient  the  defective  man 
— the  managers  of  '^  big  business  "  have  found 
they  cannot  afford  to  employ  the  drinker.  The 
drunkard  has  been  exiled  from  the  world  of 
affairs;  the  moderate  drinker  is  in  the  way  of 
following  him.  Already  he  is  a  negligible 
factor  in  the  world's  work. 

I  would  state  the  case  fairly. 

There  are  still  fields  of  opportunity  for 
the  drinker,  even  for  the  drunkard,  here  and 
there.  One  of  them  I  have  in  mind.  It  lies 
up  in  the  bleak  and  windy  hills  of  New  Eng- 
land. There  a  sober  man  has  a  large  farm. 
He  employs  many  men;  but  he  will  accept  no 
man  who  is  not  a  drunkard.  Wages  he  does 
not  pay,  but  he  gives  his  laborers  board  and 
lodging  and  all  the  hard  cider  they  want  to 
drink.     Apples  grow  thick  in  his  windy  or- 


58  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

chards  and  out  of  them  he  crushes  a  potent 
alcoholic  cider — a  score  of  barrels  a  year. 
When  age  is  on  it,  it  is  a  frightful,  nerve- 
gripping  and  heady  drink.  You  will  see  his 
helots  going  afield  in  the  morning,  each  with 
his  can  of   it. 

Where  do  they  come  from,  these  cider- 
boys? 

They  are  young  for  the  most  part,  a  sulky 
and  weedy  lot  of  loose-stepping  lads.  (The 
beverage  is  one  that  makes  for  sulkiness,  and 
begets  emaciation — not  the  bloat  of  beer.) 
They  are  not  the  Yankees  native  to  the  hills. 
They  seem  to  have  come  up  from  the  little 
cities  and  manufacturing  towns.  Their  time 
of  moderate  drinking  belongs  to  a  dirty,  youth- 
poisoned  past  in  streets  of  brick  and  stone  and 
wood.  They  are  not  part  of  the  hills.  Had  not 
the  shrewd  and  evil  Yankee  farmer  discovered 
how  to  get  a  by-product  out  of  this  wreckage 
of  life,  they  had  died  naturally  in  the  cells  or 
madhouses  of  their  cities.  Here  they  die 
drunk  in  the  hills.  You  see  them  by  day,  plod- 
ding about  their  dingy  toil — ridding  the  lean 
fields  of  their  yearly  crop  of  stones;  flogging 
the  wretched  farm-horses   along  the  furrows; 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  59 

tossing  hay  or  humoring  the  tough  soil,  where 
the  potatoes  grow  painfully — stopping  now  and 
then  to  tilt  the  can  of  acrid  cider. 

And  by  night  you  hear  them — you  hear  their 
hoarse  clamoring  in  the  hills,  or  their  wild 
cries  as  they  reel  along  the  moon-white  roads. 

This  is  one  of  the  few  economic  uses  to 
which  the  drunkard  can  still  be  put — drunken 
slavery  on  the  hills  of  wind  and  stone.  In  a 
society  which  is  being  organized  less  and  less 
"  to  suit  boozy  people  "  there  are  few  other 
places  for  him.  Nor  are  there  many  of  these 
refuges  left.  Even  for  the  wastrel  and  the 
scamp  the  end  does  not  seem  a  desirable  one; 
but  the  drunkard  who  would  still  keep  an  eco- 
nomic place  in  the  world  can  look  for  none 
other.  Slave  to  a  Yankee  peasant — chained  by 
poverty  and  drink — his  bed  straw  and  his 
food  pig — his  death  a  derision;  it  is  a  bad 
destiny  even  for  a  drunkard;  but  it  is  about 
the  best  he  can  find  in  a  society  that  is  organiz- 
ing itself  for  sober  people. 

The  drunkard  is  negligible. 

He  has  long  since  been  eliminated  from  the 
ranks  of  business.  The  tipsy  carpenter  and  the 
tipsy  clerk   have   gone   the  way  of   the   tipsy 


6o  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

"  statesman "  and  the  drunken  lawyer  and 
boozy  prize-fighter.  (Even  green  reporters, 
bearding  ill-tempered  statesmanship,  do  not  do 
it  on  the  hazy  ''courage"  of  champagne.) 

From  an  economic  viewpoint  the  drunkard  is 
non-existent.  What  ''  big  business  "  is  fighting 
to-day  is  ''  moderate  drinking  " — the  ounce-and- 
a-half-a-day  kind  of  thing.  With  the  exception 
of  those  connected  with  the  trade  in  alcoholic 
drinks — and  their  hangers-on — the  entire  world 
of  business  and  industry  is  lined  up  against 
alcohol,  and  the  battle  (since  drunkenness  is 
self-confessed  defeat)  is  being  waged  against 
moderate  drinking.  It  is  with  the  man  who  can 
drink  and  be  sober,  thank  Heaven!  that  in- 
dustry is  picking  a  quarrel.  The  physiologist 
has  shown  that  he  is  morally  defective — poisoned 
atop ;  the  Medico-Actuarial  man  has  shown  that 
he  is  physically  depleted,  warped,  defective, 
and  throws  away  from  ten  to  thirteen  years  of 
his  imperfect  life;  and  "big  business"  has 
learned  that  economically  he  is  so  bad  an  in- 
vestment that  only  in  rare  cases  is  it  worth 
while  to  bother  with  tinkering  and  repairing 
him. 

In  your  own  city,  in  your  own  town,  what- 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  6i 

soever  of  ''  big  business  "  abides  there  has  put 
its  ban  on  alcohol.  The  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
Company  employs  only  non-drinking  men;  and 
it  has  stopped  the  sale  of  liquor  in  all  property 
owned  by  it.  What  this  company  has  done  all 
the  great  employers  of  labor  have  done — the 
list  would  fill  many  pages  of  this  book.  One 
of  them,  the  American  Car  and  Foundry  Com- 
pany, has  gone  so  far  that  it  will  employ  no 
man  who  has  even  signed  a  liquor-dealer's  ap- 
plication for  a  license,  showing  thus  a  sneaking 
kindness  for  the  thing,  even  though  he  does 
not  drink  it  himself.  Nor  was  labor  much 
slower  to  act  than  capital.  Many  labor  unions 
have  barred  intoxicating  liquors  from  their 
meetings  and  entertainments,  making  thus  a 
stand  for  sobriety  even  upon  occasions  of  good- 
fellowship  and  outside  of  working  hours.  They 
are  lining  up  with  the  economic  law  and  with 
the  best  thought  of  the  day. 

How  long  can  the  moderate  drinker  face 
successfully  this  battle-line? 

Not  long;  almost  everything  is  against  him. 
And  that  world-power.  Public  Opinion,  is 
against  him.  There  is  nothing  so  amazing,  I 
think,  as  the  attitude  toward  drink  of  the  press 


62  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

of  the  country.  In  Pennsylvania  alone  thirty- 
eight  newspapers  bar  all  liquor  advertisements. 
In  other  states  five  hundred  and  twenty  im- 
portant daily  journals  keep  to  the  same  rule. 
But  more  noteworthy  is  what  the  newspapers 
have  to  say  for  themselves.  In  leaders  and 
cartoons,  in  verses  and  special  articles,  the  far- 
flung  and  vehement  Hearst  newspapers  print 
daily  sermons  against  drink.  A  prize-fighter, 
like  "  Jess "  Willard,  sets  himself  to  tell  in 
print  the  story  of  his  career  in  the  '^  ring  "  and 
his  articles  turn  out  to  be  smashing  arguments 
for  total  abstinence  from  alcoholic  drink.  The 
baseball  players  are  total  abstainers,  if  they 
are  successful  ones  like  "  Ty  "  Cobb  and  Col- 
lins, Mclnnis  and  Barry  and  ^'  Home-Run " 
Baker;  and  the  newspapers  never  weary  of 
iterating  the  fact.  The  press  of  the  day,  echo- 
ing public  opinion,  reads  like  an  old-fashioned 
temperance  exhortation.  And  it  means  one 
thing:  Society  is  no  longer  ''organized  for 
boozy  people."  The  entire  social  fabric  is 
trying  to  clean  away  the  alcoholic  dust  and 
rust  which  have  clogged  and  befouled  and 
hampered  it. 

Slowly  but  irresistibly  the  tide  is  setting  to- 


THE  MODERATE  DRINKER  63 

ward  the  sober  way  of  life.  Mankind  has 
found  that  the  science  of  eugenics,  which  is 
the  science  of  being  well  born,  was  worth  study- 
ing; and  now  it  is  finding  that  the  science 
of  euthenics,  which  is  that  of  right  living,  is 
of  equal — and  more  immediate — importance. 
Firmly,  in  multitudinous  voices,  mankind  is 
asserting  the  will  to  be  sober.  Voices  from 
the  factory  and  the  prison,  from  the  play-field 
and  the  home,  demand  the  right  to  sanity  of 
body  and  mind.  Against  this  formidable  out- 
cry the  voice  of  the  "  old  family  physician," 
over  his  bottle  of  port,  rises  small  and  thin. 
The  world  is  entering  the  sober  way  of  life. 
And  the  moderate  drinker  must  face  about  and 
march  with  it — or  be  left  behind,  among  the 
defectives,  the  ineffectives,  exiles  from  their 
generation. 

All  moderate  drinkers? 

Each  in  his  degree;  for  alcohol  is  a  poison 
and,  just  in  proportion  to  what  he  takes  of  it, 
the  moderate  drinker  is  degraded  from  his 
normal  state;  and  by  every  repetition  of  the 
dose  the  degradation  is  automatically  increased. 
The  statement  is  axiomatic.  He  is  not  stand- 
ing still  at  a  mythical  half-way  house — he  is 


64  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

going  on.  Even  though  he  does  knock  ten  or 
thirteen  years  off  his  life,  the  chances  are  he 
will  be  thrown  on  the  trash-heap  before  death 
steps  in,  compassionately,  and  takes  him.  Eco- 
nomically there  is  no  place  for  him.  And, 
since  he  is  morally — if  not  mentally — impaired, 
society,  striving  for  sanity,  looks  upon  him  with- 
out approbation. 

He's  the  one-legged  man  in  the  race. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WINE  AND  BEER  AND  THEIR  LITTLE 
RURAL  BROTHER 


Jack  London,  thinking  of  himself  (which  is 
misdirected  genius),  wrote  a  quasi-biographical 
book,  '^John  Barleycorn."  Its  purpose  was  to 
show  the  way  drink  had  with  him.  It  was 
written  in  his  powerful  and  angular  prose;  and, 
like  his  other  books,  with  its  fitfulness,  its 
flashiness  and  shouting  emphasis,  seemed  less 
a  piece  of  literature  than  the  improvisation  of 
a  man  of  genius.  But  it  was  a  rare  and  good 
book;  being  made  rare  and  good  by  its  sin- 
cerity. It  showed  you  the  boy  he  was,  in  what 
must  have  been  a  rather  barbaric  California. 
In  the  first  scene  he  was  a  tiny,  roistering  child, 
swaggering  off  with  his  adult,  Spanish-blooded 
companions  to  a  dance;  and  the  child,  in  savage 
emulation,  drank  the  crude  and  heady  wine  of 
that    country    until    he    fell    at    death's    door. 

65 


66  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

(Some  brown  girl,  if  I  remember,  dragged 
him  back  to  life.)  A  little  later  you  see  him, 
still  a  boy,  taking  his  beer — always  in  the 
bravado  of  boon-fellowship — at  the  'longshore 
taverns  of  a  desperate  city  on  the  Western 
ocean.  What  promise  he  was  making  to  the 
future  you  can  see,  for  the  quasi-biography  of 
his  book  sends  him  rioting  down  the  road  of 
drink.  It  was  a  wild  career,  for  his  life  ran 
fierce  and  swift  and  touched  high  and  difficult 
places. 

You  will  say  that  Jack  London,  being  a  man 
of  genius — genius  rather  lawless  it  may  be — 
cannot  be  taken  as  a  criterion  for  the  normal, 
duller  man.  You  will  add  that  the  stimulant 
habit — like  certain  poison  plants — flourishes 
most  in  an  over-rich  soil.  All  of  which  may 
be  true.  The  difference,  however,  is  merely 
one  of  degree.  The  way  of  the  boy  in  ^'  John 
Barleycorn  "  is  the  way  of  every  man  who 
drinks — bar  those  unhappy  victims  of  heredity, 
who  come  into  life  with  vitiated  brains  (such 
an  one  is  Oswald,  in  '^  Ghosts,"  who  lives  a 
half-told  tale).  The  way  is  the  same,  the  be- 
ginning thereof  and  the  end. 

It  is  a  maxim^  melancholy  in  its  veracity,  that 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    67 

the  road  to  drunkenness  is  paved  with  mild 
stimulants. 

Unless  he  is  a  lunatic,  no  one  begins  by 
drinking  spirits.  The  mere  physical  conscience 
revolts  against  the  indignity.  The  stomachic 
conscience  turns  over  in  disgust.  It  is  only 
when  alcohol  is  forced  into  it  in  pleasanter 
wine-y  ways — in  suaver  disguises  of  malt — that 
Nature  compromises,  saying:  ''  Oh,  well,  if  you 
insist!  " 

Nature  is  always  amenable  to  compromise; 
it  is  her  supreme  law  to  preserve  existence  at 
any  cost;  and  she  prolongs  the  poisoned  life  by 
adapting  the  organism  to  the  exigencies  of 
abnormal  habit.  Gradually  she  learns  to  accept 
the  alcoholic  doses  in  the  beer  or  the  wine;  and 
slowly  she  hardens  the  physical  conscience — it 
was  what  Mithridates  did — until  it  can  take  its 
brandy  neat.  And  there  is  no  other  way  of 
making  a  drinker;  no  other  method  of  making 
a  drunkard;  it  must  be  done  gradually  and  by 
degrees — or  the  physical  conscience  will  belch 
a  frightful  protest. 

Social  environment,  whether  of  the  "  greaser  " 
festa^  or  the  'longshore  tavern;  this,  and  a 
slowly  progressive  accustoming  of  the  bodily 


6S  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

system  to  the  action  of  the  alcoholic  poison, 
are  the  normal  methods  of  perfecting  a  sea- 
soned drinking  man. 

In  the  quasi-biography  of  "  John  Barley- 
corn "  you  see  both  methods  conjunctly  at  work; 
that  is  why  I  have  taken  the  book  as  an  illus- 
tration, but  the  life  of  any  man  would  serve 
as  well. 

I  remember — ^who  does  not  remember  such 
things? — a  man  I  knew  at  the  famous  old  Uni- 
versity of  Jena  in  Germany.  He  was  young; 
he  was  calm;  and  he  had  come  into  Germany 
from  an  American  college,  where  drink  was 
not  a  compulsory  roaring  part  of  the  curricu- 
lum— it  was,  as  you  might  say,  "  elective  " ;  and 
had  a  furtive,  low-browed  way  of  consorting 
with  rake-helly  gamblers  and  fellows  of  the 
baser  sort.  When  he  got  to  Jena  he  joined  a 
student-corps.  It  was  not  alone  that  he  wanted 
to  get  his  cheeks  scarred  with  saber-cuts  and 
to  boast — like  his  fellow-students — a  monstrous 
belly;  he  was  clubbable,  as  well,  and  wanted 
boon-companionship.  The  club  of  the  ''  corps  " 
was  his  'longshore  tavern.  So  he  was  taken  in 
and,  being  a  mere  fuchs,  was  put  to  the  test 
of  the  beer-duel.    It  was  a  pale  beer  they  drank 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    69 

in  tall  wooden  mugs,  a  pint  deep.  And  when 
the  beery  president  (a  tun  of  a  man)  challenged 
him,  with  an  ^'  Kins,  zwei,  drei! "  he  set  the 
measure  to  his  lips  and  drank  manfully;  but 
what  gullet  had  he  to  drink  against  that  tun  of 
a  man,  down  whose  throat  the  beer  ran  torrent- 
wise?  He  had  not  got  a  gill  down  before  the 
president  turned  up,  exultantly,  an  empty  mug. 
They  jeered  the  defeated  fuchs  and  sang  songs 
about  him — there  in  the  ancient  smoky  hall  of 
the  corps — and  filled  him  his  mug  again.  And 
after  every  song  up  started  some  beer-soaked 
student  in  kanonen-stiefel,  and  challenged  him 
anew  to  the  duel.  Ten  defeats,  twenty  defeats, 
saddened  him;  and  he  loved  the  derisive,  fat 
president  less  than  any  man  he  knew.  So  in 
desperate  bravado  (as  John  Barleycorn  swigged 
at  the  wine  of  the  festa)  he  summoned  the  pale, 
sweaty  knabe  who  served  the  drink. 

"  Bring  a  quart  of  brandy,"  said  he. 

The  corps  sat  silent,  lifting  fat-lidded  eyelids 
in  a  common  query. 

Slowly  he  brimmed  his  wooden  mug  with 
brandy — a  pint  of  it;  then  he  went  to  the  head 
of  the  table  where  the  huge  president  swelled 
in   his   chair.      Slowly   he   poured    a   pint   of 


70  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

brandy  into  that  man's  mug.  Then  he  chal- 
lenged him,  with  an  eins,  zwei,  drei!  and,  clos- 
ing his  desperate  eyes,  he  drank  his  own  mad 
drink.  His  physical  conscience  was  stricken 
dead  with  amazement  and  heaved  no  protest. 
The  drink  went  down.  A  faint  noise  of  cheers 
— incredibly  far  off — rang  in  his  ears;  then  he 
fell — dead  as  his  physical  conscience — dead — 
in  all  the  glory  of  the  white-gallooned  uniform 
of  his  corps  and  the  truculent  kanonen-stiefel, 
as  ever  drunkard  fell.  What  clamorous  wel- 
come they  gave  him  to  the  Saxon  corps  he 
knew  not  at  all;  nor  the  procession,  wherein 
they  bore  him  shoulder-high,  through  the  mid- 
night streets  of  the  old  town,  to  his  chambers 
in  the  Holz-markt;  these  things  he  knew  not, 
but  he  woke  to  the  cold  and  greasy  light  of 
a  winter  dawn.  He  was  on  the  couch  in  his 
study,  booted  and  cloaked,  like  a  warrior  taking 
his  rest.  He  started  up  abruptly,  for  he  had 
heard  the  reveille  of  his  physical  conscience — 
rumbling  its  despairing:  ^' We  can't  get  'im 
up,  we  can't  get  'im  up,  this  mornin'."  An 
interlude;  a  duel  in  which  physical  conscience 
won.  And  empty  he  went  out  into  the  empty 
town.    Overhead  a  queasy  dawn  flapped  to  and 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    71 

fro  like  a  ghostly  flag.  Just  such  a  dawn  was 
in  his  brain,  but  foggier.  And  he  took  to  the 
road.  A  long  road,  a  naked  road,  the  road 
that  leads  to  Weimar,  a  road  of  fourteen  miles, 
with  haggard  plum-trees  dancing  along  the 
side  of  it.  In  an  hour,  in  three  hours,  in  five 
hours  (for  there  was  no  time)  he  came  to  the 
ruins  of  an  old  castle.  It  was  the  castle  of 
Goena;  and  he  sat  upon  a  rock,  gloomily,  as 
Job  sat  upon  the  dunghill  of  his  thoughts  and 
scratched  himsel'  wi'  a  broken  pot.  How  long 
he  sat  there  he  did  not  know,  for,  as  I  have 
said,  there  was  no  time.  Suddenly  he  looked 
up  into  a  pair  of  pale-blue  eyes. 

The  eyes  were  on  a  level  with  his  nose,  as 
he  crouched  there  in  his  Job-like  attitude. 
They  belonged  to  a  small,  weather-beaten  little 
girl  in  a  ragged  cloak.  She  was  bare  of  leg 
and  head;  and  she  carried,  like  some  outcast 
and  vagabond  fairy,  a  mysterious  wand.  Be- 
hind her  loitered,  victims  of  the  wand,  a  flock 
of  grey  geese.  The  student  and  the  goose-girl 
stared  at  each  other.  Curiosity  in  her  eyes 
gave  way  to  sympathy. 

'^What's  the  matter  with  you?"  she  asked. 

He  wagged  his  head  drearily  (like  Job)  and 


72  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

even  as  he  moved  it  his  physical  conscience 
(down  in  the  hold)  stirred  uneasily. 

"  YouVe  been  sitting  here  for  two  hours  like 
a  stone — lieber  Gottf ''  she  said. 

''  I  think,"  said  he,  and  the  words  tasted 
like  a  forgotten  promise,  "  that  I  am  hungry.'' 

The  little  girl  knew  what  hunger  was;  she 
said  '^  ach  so!"  and  laid  down  her  wand,  but 
she  still  looked  like  a  fairy  as  she  opened  her 
cloak,  untied  a  pocket  in  her  petticoat  and 
produced  a  piece  of  black  bread. 

The  man  did  not  want  her  dinner;  but  was 
there  a  place  where  food  could  be  bought? 
She  pointed  to  a  peasant's  house  down  the  road, 
where  her  master  dwelt. 

"  I  don't  dare  to  take  you!"  said  the  goose- 
girl,  "  but  if  you've  got  money  it  will  be  all 
right." 

She  picked  up  her  wand  and  waved  it,  per- 
haps, for  in  some  witchcrafty  way  the  student 
found  himself  in  the  peasant's  cottage;  and  he 
was  sitting  at  a  wooden  table  in  front  of  a 
stone  vessel  filled  with  acrid  beer;  and,  from 
the  noonday  pot,  a  blowsy  woman  was  bring- 
ing him  the  oily  thigh  of  a  goose  that  swam 
in  a  dish  of  bubbling  grease. 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    73 

Hungry?  He  was  empty  as  a  drum. 
Thirsty?  He  was  parched  as  a  bean.  He 
would  have  given  the  kanonen-stiefel  off  his 
legs  for  a  fill  of  food  and  drink.  And  he  lifted 
the  mug — 

At  the  mere  gesture  his  physical  con- 
science got  to  its  feet  and  reelingly  protested. 
"Down!"  he  whispered,  but  it  would  not 
down,  until  he  took  it  out  of  doors  into  the 
wintry  air.  Still  empty  he  plodded  back  along 
the  naked  road  to  Jena — and  from  afar  the 
goose-girl  watched  him  as  he  went. 

Now,  what  I  would  have  you  heedfully  no- 
tice in  this  adventure  of  the  physical  conscience 
is  this:  Nobly  and  resolutely  it  sounded  its 
warnings,  as  it  always  does.  It  said:  "Of 
course,  you  feel  like  the  deuce  and  all — alcohol 
did  it — I  won't  have  it — take  it  away!"  It 
had  risen  in  violent  protest  against  that  mad 
drench  of  fifty-per-cent.-alcohol  brandy.  (It 
was  by  error  that  it  included  fat  goose  in  its 
protest;  and  from  that  day  to  this — if  he  is  still 
alive — that  young  man  could  never  look  at 
goose,  boiled  in  its  grease,  or  fried  in  its 
fat,  without  a  twinge  of  the  stomachic  con- 
science.)     Had   the   student  gone   slowly  and 


74  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

methodically  about  the  business  of  drugging 
his  physical  conscience  with  small  doses  of 
alcohol  in  beer — if,  unheeding  the  first  warn- 
ings, he  had  forced  the  beer  in,  little  by  little — 
Nature  would  have  compromised.  She  would 
have  done  her  best  to  adapt  the  organism  to 
the  exigencies  of  the  abnormal  habit.  In  time 
she  had  not  only  tolerated  the  alien  intruder, 
she  had  admitted  a  degrading  and  persistent 
need  of  him.  And  at  that  point  your  man  had 
reached  the  alcohol  habit.  This  methodical 
way  of  adding  small  dose  to  small  dose  is  the 
only  manner  in  which  a  sane  man  can  prepare 
himself  to  be  a  drunkard.  Violent  drenches 
of  alcohol  merely  turn  the  stomach  over  in 
disgust.  One  must  pave  the  road  to  drunken- 
ness with  mild  stimulants.  Instinct  furiously 
resists  a  sudden  alcoholic  raid.  One  must  cheat 
Nature  by  the  modest  advances,  seemingly 
harmless,  of  perfumed  wines  and  mild-faced 
beers;  and  then,  when  one  has  crept  to  close 
quarters,  one  can  knock  her  about  the  head 
and  have  his  will  of  her. 

Every  drunkard  has  begun  with  wine  and 
beer;  never,  in  a  normal  man,  did  Nature  pri- 
marily accept  alcohol  save  in  its  most  veiled 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER     75 

and  delicate  disguises.  Boys  and  women,  in 
their  clean-stomached,  sensitive  way,  always  go 
in  for  the  sweetest  wines,  when  they  begin  to 
drink.     It  is  inevitable;  it  is  nature's  law. 

Therefore,  if  you  will,  let  us  have  word  with 
wine  and  beer;  not  overlooking  that  little  alco- 
holic, rural  brother  of  the  twain,  cider. 


II 

The  greater  part  of  my  life  I  have  lived  in 
wine  countries,  attracted  not  by  the  casks  in 
the  cellars,  but  by  the  sun  overhead.  France, 
Italy,  Spain — they  have  an  implacable  charm, 
which  it  is  difficult  to  define  save  in  terms  of 
sunlight,  wine  and  song.  Sunlight  sifting 
through  the  olive-trees,  or  gilding  the  chest- 
nuts; songs  echoing  in  the  night;  the  must 
foaming  under  brown  feet  or  the  wine,  brood- 
ing mysteriously  in  dark  cellars — brooding 
there,  or  sent  round  in  great  flagons  to  set  a 
village  dancing  mad — these  are  the  things  that 
haunt  the  memory  of  one  who  has  spent  dec- 
ades of  his  life  in  the  land  where  the  vines 
grow.  Always  one  remembers  the  best  of  life; 
the  dirty  and  tragic  parts  slip  out  of  mind.    Of 


76  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

one's  youth,  for  instance,  one  keeps  in  memory 
not  what  was  wild  and  sad  and  dirty,  but  what 
was  best  and  sweetest;  until  a  haze  of  vague 
poetry  covers   it. 

And  so  with  the  wine  lands.  Go  to  the  real 
facts  of  life — banish  the  haze  of  poetic  fancy — 
and  what  you  see  is  not  the  cannikin-clinking 
merriment  of  comic  opera,  but  a  sadder,  drear- 
ier way  of  life. 

I  am  speaking  of  lands  where  the  grapes 
grow,  where  wine  is  ^^  natural,  pure  and  cheap." 
It  is  there  at  its  best.  The  alcohol,  always  a 
poison,  is,  in  its  least  harmful  form,  concealed 
in  the  beneficent  juice  of  the  grape — hidden  in 
suavity  and  perfume.  And  what  it  does  to 
the  race  of  men,  dwellers  in  sunlight,  you  know; 
for  you  have  shuddered  at  these  crippled  and 
distorted  generations,  with  their  beggars  and 
idiots,  bearing  one  and  all — to  the  eye  of  the 
physiologist — the  stigmata  of  alcoholic  pen- 
alties. 

No  drunkenness  in  Southern  Europe? 

He  who  makes  that  statement  speaks  out  of 
deep  ignorance.  He  has  never  dwelt  in  the 
villages  of  Provence,  or  wandered  over  the 
white  roads  of  Italy.     You  do  not,   I   admit, 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    77 

see  so  wild  and  manifest  a  drunkenness  as  in 
the  harsh,  northern,  spirit-drinking  lands;  but 
the  southern  drinker,  making  up  in  quantity 
what  was  wanting  in  the  alcoholic  strength  of 
his  beverage,  reaches  the  same  stage  of  physical 
impairment,  begets  the  same  poisoned  offspring, 
dies  in  the  same  kind  of  alcoholic  dissolution — 
to  use  the  technical  phrase.  His  moral  corrup- 
tion, as  his  physical  degeneration,  is  slower  in 
its  progress;  but  statistics  might  be  piled  hos- 
pital-high to  show  it  reaches  the  same  end. 

Spain  was  '^  sober  Spain  "  when  it  was  pov- 
erty-stricken Spain;  Italy  was  sober  when  her 
peasants  were  too  poor  to  drink  the  wine  they 
made;  in  France  sobriety  went  with  frugality. 
What  is  the  meaning  of  that?  Simply  this: 
Wine-drinking  has  always  made  for  drunken- 
ness; the  check  on  excess  was  merely  want  of 
opportunity.  The  vice  grows  by  what  it  feeds 
upon.  Alcohol  taken  in  w^ine  breeds  the  same 
disease  of  mind  and  body  that  it  breeds  in  its 
more  fiery  disguises.  And  the  habit  demands 
stronger  doses,  more  persistent  stimulation.  In 
forty  years,  for  which  the  statistics  were  kept, 
the  consumption  of  alcohol  in  France  was* 
tripled.     This  was   in   the  old  wine-drinking 


78  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

days.  But  your  nation  is  like  a  man;  it  is  the 
macrocosmic  twin  of  man;  and  the  wine  habit 
led  straight  to  stronger  ways  of  drink.  It 
was  in  my  horoscope  to  watch  for  twenty  years 
the  growth  of  the  alcohol  habit  in  France.  I 
saw  the  nation  weary  of  the  too  feeble  intoxi- 
cant of  wine  and  take  to  strong  drink.  During 
those  years  the  drinking  of  absinthe  alone  rose 
from  an  annual  consumption  of  one  million 
gallons  to  over  five  million  gallons.  The  wine- 
shops of  Provence,  as  I  knew  them  in  my  green 
youth — the  shady  arbor  and  the  dancing-floor — 
vanished  quite;  in  their  places  were  dreary 
cafes,  the  shelves  lined  with  gaudy  bottles  of 
aperitifs — high-colored,  swift-acting  decoctions 
of  alcohol.  The  French  race,  with  dangerous 
deterioration,  turned  from  the  slow  poison  of 
wine  to  the  fiercer  and  more  active  of  alcohol 
poisons — to  the  wilder  alcohol  of  amers  and 
absinthes. 

(With  what  fine  spiritual  energy,  born  of 
battle-peril,  France  drew  herself  back  from  the 
abyss  of  racial  degeneration,  you  shall  see;  but 
assuredly  she  was  going — even  as  the  wine-boy 
is  making  for  whisky  drunkenness — toward  the 
alcoholic  deterioration  which  is  national  death. 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    79 

Shall  I  say  she  was  saved  by  the  scarlet  and 
terrible  energies  of  war?  I  shall  not  say 
it  here.) 

Let  there  be  no  doubt  about  it:  the  wine  way 
to  drunkenness  is  a  way  like  any  other.  You 
say  it  is  cleaner,  with  gayer  prospects  and 
brighter  skies?  Nine-tenths  of  that  is  cant  and 
the  cheap  apologia  of  second-rate,  brandy- 
loosened  poets.  It  is  not  a  clean  way;  if  you 
have  followed  the  trail  of  the  wine-drunkard, 
home-faring:  The  drunkard  of  ancient  Rome 
was  your  real  wine-drunkard;  in  order  to  get 
into  his  bodily  system  all  the  alcohol  he  craved 
he  had  to  have  his  vomitorium — that  the  pioison 
might  force  its  way  to  his  brain  in  relays. 

I  say  that  the  w^ine-drinker  differs  no  whit 
from  any  other  drinker  of  alcohol.  His  at- 
tempt to  poetize  his  vice — a  vice  which  has,  too, 
its  pathology — is  only  a  kind  of  apologetic 
hypocrisy.  And  take  this:  In  this  day  no  man 
drinks  only  wine. 

The  last  man  who  claimed  to  be  a  "  Bur- 
gundy man  "  died  a  few  years  ago  in  Nice — 
his  blood-vessels  exploding  with  amazing  sud- 
denness and  drenching  with  alcoholized  blood 
his  shining  dinner-table,  his  little  daughter  and 


8o  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

his  guests.  He  was  a  dear  man,  for  all  his 
clouded  brain  and  twitching  tempers,  but  his 
boast  of  being  a  "  Burgundy  man  "  was  sheer 
rubbish;  the  Burgundy  was  merely  a  fat,  red 
parenthesis  between  the  morning  ^'  bracers " 
and  the  midnight  spirit  cups. 

He  was  like  another;  wine  was  his  pass-key 
to  spirits. 

The  other  day  I  was  given  a  statement,  is- 
sued by  a  California  viticulturist;  I  was  asked 
to  read  it;  and  I  read  it.  You  may  care  to  look 
at  the  more  attractive  part  of  it,  for  it  is  typical 
• — in  its  adroitness,  in  its  pocket-appeal  and  its 
hypocrisy — of  the  literature  the  wine-artificers 
are  sending  abroad.     Read  here: — 

^'  The  viticultural  industry  of  California  has 
increased  from  year  to  year,  and  it  has  now 
reached  a  point  where  it  produces  from  forty 
to  fifty  million  gallons  of  fine  wine  per  annum 
— but  this  is  a  mere  bagatelle  to  what  the  wine 
industry  would  become  in  the  future  if  it  were 
fostered.  We  see  that  Italy  and  France,  each 
having  about  the  same  extent  of  territory  as 
California,  produce  over  1,000,000,000  gallons 
of  wine  each  year,  from  which  they  derive  in 
the  neighborhood  of  $200,000,000  per  annum — 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    8i 

and  giving  employment  to  several  million 
people. 

^'  Now  California  has  the  same  soil  and 
sunny  clime  as  possessed  by  those  two  great 
wine-producing  countries,  so  that  when  our 
good  American  people  will  be  accustomed  to 
the  use  of  the  delicious  juice  of  the  grape  at 
their  meals,  following  the  example  set  by  the 
wine  countries  of  Europe,  both  by  old  and 
young,  then  this  state  will  be  able  also  to  pro- 
duce 1,000,000,000  gallons  of  wine  per  annum, 
which  will  give  a  production  of  about  $200,- 
000,000,  and  by  which  we  will  be  able  to  turn 
our  sheep  ranges  into  valuable  vineyard  prop- 
erties, creating  new  towns  and  cities,  and  giving 
employment  to  several  million  happy  families 
in  this  state,  after  the  methods  employed  by  the 
grape-growing  countries  of  Europe. 

''  In  order  to  arrive  at  this  stage  of  develop- 
ment we  must  do  as  the  families  in  Europe — 
add  a  little  wine  to  the  glass  of  water  for  the 
children — educate  them  to  use  wine  at  their 
meals,  and  in  so  doing  we  will  achieve  two 
great  blessings  by  removing  the  two  greatest 
evils  with  which  our  country  is  afflicted — 
drunkenness  and  prohibition — for  it  is  a  well- 

\5t%5 


82  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

known  fact  that  in  the  countries  where  every 
man,  woman  and  child  use  wine  at  their  meals, 
drunkenness  is  almost  unknown." 

The  two  familiar  lies;  as  to  the  economic  lie 
I  shall  have  more  than  a  little  to  say.  For  the 
moment  let  us  leave  the  viticulturist's  dream 
of  ^'  sheep-ranches  turned  into  vineyards  "  and 
the  money  that  will  pour  in  upon  him.  Take 
the  other  lie.  ^'  It  is  a  well-known  fact "  that 
in  countries  where  every  man,  woman  and  child 
use  wine  at  their  meals,  drunkenness  (so  far 
from  being  almost  unknown)  has  increased 
within  the  last  two  prosperous  generations  to 
such  an  extent  that  it  has  become  (as  in  France) 
not  only  a  national  problem,  but  a  matter  of 
life  and  death.  That  is  the  precise  fact;  de- 
nial can  come  only  from  ignorance  or  greed. 
And  knowing  what  you  know  of  the  unfail- 
ing progressive  action  of  alcoholic  poisoning, 
whether  the  doses  be  minutely  small  or  brandy- 
large,  it  would  be  interesting  to  hear  your  opin- 
ion of  this  man  who  would  fain  breed  a 
drunken  race  by  poisoning  it  (with  deftly  wa- 
tered doses)  in  the  cradle.  I  know  what  I 
think  of  him.  I  know  what  I  would  do  to 
him,   if   I   came   upon   him  "  adding   a   little 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    83 

wine  to  the  glass  of  water  for  the  children  " — 
by  the  grace  of  my  football  days,  I  know  what 
I  would  do  to  that  smug  baby-poisoner! 
Verily. 

But  how's  he  to  sell  his  wine — turn  horrid 
sheep-pastures  into  delectable  vineyards — un- 
less he  breeds  the  wine-want  in  the  coming 
generation?  The  wise  old  trader!  He  knows, 
none  better,  that  the  alcoholized  race  dies  fast 
— thirteen  years  too  fast,  even  for  the  moderate 
wine-drinker;  and  with  thrifty  foresight  he 
would  breed  a  race  that  took  to  alcohol  from 
the  cradle.  There  has  been  a  hideous  waste; 
babies  have  played,  sober,  in  the  nursery;  chil- 
dren have  gone,  sober,  to  school — years  of 
juvenile  sobriety  that  have  brought  not  a  penny 
to  this  viticulturist.  Heaven  help  his  purse! 
Wasted  years!  Now  millions  of  gallons  of  his 
^'  fine  wine  per  annum  "  can  be  delicately  in- 
jected into  the  youth  of  the  land,  if  only  gen- 
erous parents  will  "  educate  them  to  use  wine 
at  their  meals."  Well,  that  is  one  way  of  mak- 
ing money;  possibly  it  seems  to  you  the  dirtiest 
w^ay  a  man  ever  befouled  himself  in. 

All  the  fashionable  lies  about  wine  are  in 
that  statement  save  one.    The  viticulturist  for- 


84  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

got  to  urge  that  wine,  '^  moderately  taken," 
brightens  a  man  up. 

Does  it?  You  have  seen  that  the  effect  of 
alcohol  is  merely  that  of  loosening  self-control 
and  unbuttoning  the  discriminating  judgment, 
so  that  imagination  may  run  more  lightly  aber- 
rant; thus  the  man  is  the  freer  for  it — at  a 
certain  stage  the  mind  soars,  but  it  soars  into 
the  clouds.  It  is  a  question  whether  he  is  the 
better  for  the  liberation  of  the  lower,  emotional 
nature — with  bit  out  and  bridle  off;  whether 
paucum  vini  acuit  ingenium. 

Anyway,  that  kind  of  man  is  not  worth 
brightening;  he  has  too  shockingly  low  a  flash- 
point.   He  were  best  left  dark. 

Ill 

Every  kind  of  alcoholic  beverage  has  its  own 
peculiar  method  of  acting  upon  the  nervous 
system  and  the  brain.  Wine  is  the  blithest  and 
headiest  excitement.  Beer  does  not  make  for 
gayety,  though  it  begets  a  loosening  and  en- 
larging kind  of  physical  cheerfulness.  It  swells 
and  sways  and  rumbles  pleasurably  in  the 
Stomachic    cavity.      It    does    not    quicken    the 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    85 

brain  and  unfrock  the  imagination,  as  wine 
does.  It  teases  more  persistently  the  nerves, 
so  that  your  beer-drinker  is  always  touchy,  quer- 
ulous and  hysterical,  until  he  has  flooded  his 
stomach. 

One  of  the  fundamental  errors  is  that  beer 
makes  for  stolidity. 

It  is  a  fashion  to  speak  of  the  stolid  German, 
as  though  he  were  braced  and  made  steady  by 
his  beer.  There  is  no  truth  in  it.  He  is  un- 
braced and  made  first  dull  and  then  hysterical. 
If  you  have  spent  your  nights  in  the  great  beer- 
halls  of  Munich,  for  example,  you  have  ob- 
served that  there  comes  an  hour  when  one-half 
the  beer-soaked  populace  is  beating  the  tables 
in  beer-anger,  while  the  other  half  is  in  vary- 
ing stages  of  beer-boorishness,  beer-melancholia, 
beer-lunacy.  These  are  all  emotional  stages. 
They  are  unfailingly  found  in  the  beer-drinker. 
The  symptoms  are  always  broadly  the  same: 
dullness,  diminution  of  the  power  of  effort 
and  the  inability  properly  to  associate  ideas 
and  use  them  with  reference  to  the  outside 
world.  Beer  disorders  the  middle  functional 
level  of  the  brain.  And  the  beer-drinker's  gay- 
ety  is  hysterical,  just  as,  when  he  sinks  into 


86  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

dullness,  his  dullness  is  one  of  rugged  quies- 
cence. Stir  up  a  soddenly  brooding  beer- 
drinker  and  he  explodes  into  lawless  hysteria. 
This  is  a  characteristic  of,  for  example,  the 
beer-drinking  German  race — a  sane  discussion 
with  a  beer-distorted  German  is  quite  impos- 
sible. His  brain  is  not  functioning  on  its  high- 
est level;  over  that  level  an  alcohol  cloud  lies 
thick;  he  is  functioning  on  the  emotional  plane 
— a  plane  broken,  dislocated  and  fissured  by 
off-repeated  small  doses  of  alcohol.  And  so, 
argument,  for  him,  is  a  mere  series  of  emo- 
tional explosions.  You  cannot  argue  with  such 
an  one,  whether  he  is  exploding  on  the  lecture 
platform  or  in  a  student's  club. 

There  is  one  rather  attractive  point  at  which 
the  beer-drinker  poses  lightly  as  he  goes  up 
and  down  the  ladder  of  his  emotional  excite- 
ment. It  is  when  he  is  midway  between  tears 
and  laughter;  when  the  bodily  glow  and  sense 
of  fullness  are  at  their  medium  point;  when 
the  bodily  organs,  hopefully  dilated,  telegraph 
their  "  organic  congratulations "  of  well-being 
to  the  flushed  brain;  then,  for  a  space,  he  loves 
all  the  world,  because  only  pleasant  impressions 
from  without  come  to  him — and  he  sings.    Son 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    87 

of  the  land  of  song!  He  sings  of  love  and 
friendship.  Harmless  visions  of  girls  and 
children  haunt  him.  Until  the  emotionalism, 
which  has  found  expression  in  simple,  sweet- 
bodied  lieder,  drops  and  coarsens  and  he  roars 
aloud,  with  his  chorusing  fellows,  for  the  sheer 
joy  of  noise — as  madmen  shout.  But  the 
medium  point,  where  the  beer-drinker  is  sen- 
timental, musical,  forthgoing,  is  the  best  that 
beer  can  give.  It  is  not  to  be  left  out  of  the 
reckoning.  The  whisky-drinker  has  his  mo- 
ment of  similar  kindliness;  but  it  is  of  shorter 
duration.  That  of  the  beer-drinker  is  more 
slowly  reached  and  lingers  on  with  him  in 
more  leisurely  enjoyment;  but  the  states  differ 
not  at  all.  One  is  due  to  the  fifty  per  cent,  of 
alcohol  gulped  in  a  glass  of  whisky;  the  other 
to  the  three  or  five  per  cent,  of  alcohol  sopped 
up  in  half  a  score  of  beer  mugs. 

Old-fashioned  medical  practitioners — I  have 
in  mind  one  particular  old-school  doctor,  ad- 
dressing the  annual  convention  of  the  Brewers' 
Association — still  sing  the  praises  of  beer.  Of 
course,  Dr.  belongs  to  a  genera- 
tion other  than  ours.  How  far  it  is  behind 
the  scientific  thought  of  the  day  you  may  see 


88  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

from  the  fact  that  it  still  clings  pathetically 
to  "  Anstie's  limit " — a  standard  long  since 
abolished  even  by  the  Medico-Actuarial  men. 

And   Dr.   ,   with   the  wistful,   unteach- 

able  dogmatism  of  age,  told  his  brewers  that 
beer  was  a  food  as  well  as  a  drink;  that 
alcohol  '^  in  moderation"  was  a  good  thing; 
that  ^^  it  may  be  taken  in  moderation  through- 
out life  not  only  without  injury,  but  under 
certain  circumstances  with  positive  benefit, 
and  so  long  as  the  quantity  does  not  exceed  the 
equivalent  of  one  and  a  half  or  two  ounces 
of  absolute  alcohol,  it  is  innocuous." 

Anstie's  limit,  you  see.  Sharpens  limit;  and 
the  like.  Precisely  what  this  two-ounce  quan- 
tity of  alcohol  does  to  a  man  you  already  know. 
It  produces  alcoholic  paralysis  on  the  higher 
levels  of  the  brain,  exactly  as  it  makes  for 
alcoholic  dissolution.  That  old  lie  of  the 
"  harmlessness "  of  two-ounce  intoxication — 
which  the  old-fashioned  medical  men  parade 
for  the  brewers  and  which  the  brewers  parade 
in  the  press — needs  no  refutation  to-day.  Sci- 
ence has  killed  it;  and  the  Medico-Actuarial 
man  has  stamped  upon  its  grave.  A  younger 
physician — a    modern    authority — Dr.    Woods 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    89 

Hutchinson,  dismisses  it  as  ''  incredible."  In- 
deed it  is  well-nigh  incredible  that  it  was  ever 
accepted  by  studious,  unprejudiced,  scientific 
observers. 

And  you  notice  that  the  ^^  beer-is-food  "  lie 
still  sticks  up  its  head  at  the  annual  conven- 
tion of  the  brewers. 

Here  (for  the  sake  of  the  man  behind  the 
words)  I  shall  quote  Dr.  Woods  Hutchin- 
son: 

"  The  myth  of  its  food-value  as  fuel  to  the 
body-engine  was,  of  course,  exploded  long  ago, 
but  the  idea  still  persisted,  and  persists  that  it 
in  some  mysterious  way  increases  working 
power. 

'^  The  first  '  teetotalers '  who  declared  they 
could  do  their  work  just  as  well  and  even 
better  without  it  were  greeted  with  jeers  and 
derision  as  deluded  fanatics. 

"  But  the  number  of  these  ^  milksops '  kept 
steadily  increasing,  and  finally,  some  five  or  six 
years  ago,  experts  decided  to  give  the  ques- 
tion a  thorough  laboratory  test  and  tryout. 

"  Groups  of  workers  were  selected  from  va- 
rious industries  whose  tasks  were  piecework  or 
whose   output   could   be   accurately  measured. 


90  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

The  test  was  confined  to  moderate  drinkers, 
habitual  drunkards  or  heavy  imbibers  who  were 
obviously  the  worse  for  liquor  being  eliminated. 

''  The  work  done  by  the  men — for  instance, 
the  number  of  ems  set  by  printers — on  their 
usual  allowance  of  beer  or  wine  was  first  care- 
fully measured  for  three  days.  Then  the  men 
were  induced  to  cut  out  liquor  in  all  forms  for 
three  days,  and  when  thus  fairly  settled  on  the 
water  wagon  their  output  was  again  measured. 

^'  Then  they  were  allowed  to  resume  their 
usual  rations  of  beer  and  their  work  again 
measured.  Many  of  the  men  complained  of 
this  enforced  '  fast '  and  '  felt  much  better ' 
when  they  got  back  to  their  regular  beer,  but 
the  actual  results  in  cold  figures  were  aston- 
ishingly uniform  in  all  ten  of  the  trade  and 
occupation  groups  tested.  The  men  during  the 
days  of  abstinence  turned  out  from  ten  to 
twenty-five  per  cent,  more  work  than  they  had 
been  averaging  before,  and  as  soon  as  they 
got  back  to  their  liquor  and  '  felt  so  much  bet- 
ter '  their  output  fell  right  back  to  the  old 
level." 

The  tests  to  which  Dr.  Woods  Hutchin- 
son refers  were  made  in  Munich,  by  Dr.  Emil 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER    91 

Kraepelin,  professor  of  mental  diseases  in 
the  university  of  that  city.  A  full  report  of 
the  tests  lies  before  me.  Their  interest  to  this 
chapter  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  tests  were  made 
in  a  beer-land  upon  beer-drinkers.  What  they 
demonstrated  was  that  alcohol,  taken  as  you 
will,  is  not  a  stimulant;  that  it  is  first  and 
last  a  narcotic;  that  the  stimulation  is  purely 
imaginary — that  one  does  less  and  poorer  work 
under  its  influence,  although  curiously  enough 
he  thinks  he  is  turning  out  more  and  better, 
work.  Moreover,  Kraepelin  and  his  co- 
workers proved  that  the  narcosis  is  progres- 
sive, that  it  is  not  the  fourth  or  fifth  drink 
that  intoxicates — it  is  the  sum  of  the  first,  sec- 
ond and  third. 

A  man  is  "  drunk,  or  under  the  influence  of 
liquor  to  a  demonstrable  degree,"  says  Doctor 
Kraepelin,  "  when  his  muscular  or  mental  speed 
or  endurance  limits  have  suffered  a  diminution 
as  a  result  of  his  having  imbibed.  This  con- 
dition may  be  clearly  shown  by  mechanical 
devices  of  the  laboratory,  whose  testimony  is 
final,  no  matter  what  the  man  himself  has  to 
say  about  it.  There  is  no  appeal  from  their 
decision." 


92  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

You  cannot  fool,  for  instance,  the  ergograph, 
a  laboratory  device  invented  by  Professor 
Angelo  Mosso;  it  records  the  muscular  devia- 
tions of  the  beer-drinker  after  one  glass,  two, 
three  and  so  on.  The  Munich  tests  spoke  ir- 
refutably. The  demonstration  was  convincing; 
it  proved  conclusively  that  the  beer-drinker  is 
living  only  a  small  part  of  his  normal  life.  His 
beer  is  not  a  food — not  a  stimulant;  it  is  de- 
grading his  powers,  not  increasing  them.  It  is 
doing  to  him  exactly  what  alcohol  in  any  and 
every  form  is  doing  to  man — poisoning  him 
from  the  top  downwards. 


ly 

And  cider? 

This  hard  and  dirty  little  brother  of  the 
family? 

I  know  best  two  cider-drunken  lands,  Nor- 
mandy and  those  bleak  New  England  hills, 
whereof  I  have  written.  In  Normandy  the 
peasant  may  make  and  drink  all  the  cider  he 
pleases,  without  the  excise  laying  hand  upon 
him.  Cider  he  may  not  sell.  Often  I  have 
come,  of  a  sun-hot  day,  into  a  Normandy  cot- 


WINE,  BEER  AND  LITTLE  BROTHER      93 

tage,  where  a  peasant  sat  swigging  his  hard, 
yellow  cider — and  he  dared  not  pass  me  the 
glass,  though  his  avaricious  eyes  danced  at  sight 
of  the  coin. 

It  is  a  bad  drink,  hard  cider.  It  does  not 
broaden  a  man  out  as  beer  does,  or  set  him 
dancing-gay  like  wine.  It  hardens  him  and 
corrodes.  In  the  end  it  makes  for  the  madness, 
so  common  in  the  cider-countries,  of  melan- 
cholia, which  is  a  darker,  down-going  madness ; 
but  before  that  end  it  acts  curiously  on  the  man. 
It  begets  none  of  the  wine-y  and  beery  "  gen- 
erosity " — the  carelessness  of  possessing — of 
which  I  have  written;  it  breeds,  rather,  a  curi- 
ous, ingrowing  selfishness.  It  is  the  father  of 
avarice.  They  are  tight  folk,  in  a  twin  sense  of 
the  word,  these  cider-drinkers.  And  it  is  the 
^^  father  of  livor,"  as  the  Latin  poet  said;  for 
this  form  of  alcoholic  poisoning  produces  a 
harsh  and  crabbed  kind  of  envy — they  are  an 
envious,  hard,  ill-contented  lot,  and  avaricious. 

These  are  the  psychological  effects  of  taking 
one's  alcohol  in  the  form  of  cider;  and  the 
drink  makes  for  the  nastiest  kind  of  physical 
drunkenness.  It  is  worse  than  wine,  it  is  more 
fatally  active  than  beer — it  is,  in  a  word  or  two, 


94  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

the  worst  of  the  three  brothers.  Men  may  drink 
wine  to  be  gay  and  beer  to  be  emotionally 
loosened;  but  he  who  drinks  hard  cider  drinks 
it  for  the  one  compelling  reason  that  he  would 
fain  be  sourly  drunk. 

On  that  dirty  little  rustic  brother  of  the 
^^  mild  drink "  family  the  law  should  lay  a 
heavy  hand. 


CHAPTER  V 

ADULTERATION   AND 
FALSIFICATION 


We  have  been  told  often  enough  by  the 
"  viticulturists "  that  the  wine-makers  are 
moved  by  the  most  philanthropical  motives; 
it  is  to  save  the  race  from  drunkenness  that 
they  want  to  be  permitted  to  dose  the  baby 
and  the  child  with  "  wine  and  water."  And 
the  advertisements  of  the  beer-brewers  will 
tell  you  what  rare  philanthropists  they 
are — providing  beer  as  '^  a  food "  for  the 
poor  man  who  has  no  mutton  twirling  at  his 
fire. 

Thereupon  the  question  emerges: 

If  wine  be  so  good  a  thing — if  pure  beer 
be  so  beneficent  a  food — ^why,  in  the  name 
of  philanthropy,  do  they  not  sell  pure  wine 
and  pure  beer? 

Here  I  shall  ask  a  question — calmly,  with- 

95 


96  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

out  emphasis,  tranquilly,  as  a  teacher  to  a  stu- 
dent in  rectilinear  geometry: 

Were  a  monument  erected  to  every  distiller 
in  the  United  States  who  sells  unadulterated 
whisky — to  every  brewer  who  sells  a  bottle 
of  pure  beer — to  every  wine-dealer  who  sells 
unfalsified  wine — how  many  such  monuments 
would  be  erected? 

Injurious  as  pure  beer  is,  the  beer-drinker 
does  not  get  it;  dangerous  as  wine  is,  it  is  not 
wine  the  wine-tippler  buys;  and  fatally  poi- 
sonous as  unadulterated  whisky  is,  the  whisky- 
drinker  is  poisoning  himself  with  a  deadlier 
compound. 

All  hard  liquors  (except  rum)  are  virtually 
colorless;  they  are  colored  and  flavored  to  suit 
the  taste.  In  all  of  these  liquors  there  are 
two  kinds  of  impurities.  Among  the  natural 
impurities  in  whisky,  for  example,  the  only 
one  which  is  really  harmful  is  fusel  oil.  This 
can  be  eliminated,  but  it  is  almost  always, 
if  not  always,  merely  hidden.  The  artificial 
impurities  are  legion.  The  distillers  can  add 
chemicals  which  can  give  the  whisky  any 
desired  ^'  age  " — so  far  as  the  palate  can  tell. 
Take  so-called  Scotch  whisky.     The  creosote 


ADULTERATION  —  FALSIFICATION     97 

in  it  is  carried  over  from  the  peat,  in  the 
natural  Scottish  way  of  making  it.  In  the 
''  Scotch  whisky "  sold  in  huge,  unimported 
quantities  in  the  United  States,  the  creosote  has 
beeo  artificially  added.  (What  creosote  does 
to  the  bodily  organs  you  may  gather  from  the 
knowledge  that  it  is  used  to  preserve  ham — 
giving  it  the  smoky  odor  ham-eaters  admire.) 
Most  of  the  ^'  Scotch  whisky  "  sold  in  America 
is  a  "  fake  " — a  chemical  decoction  of  various 
poisons  added  to  the  primitive  poison  of  alco- 
hol. An  authority  (whom  I  am  quoting 
largely  in  this  chapter)  assured  me  that  the 
amount  of  real  Scotch  whisky  imported  into 
this  country  would  not  supply  even  the  bars 
of  New  York  City.  Nine-tenths  and  more 
of  what  is  dispensed  under  that  name  is  "  fake  " 
— alcohol  colored  and  flavored  with  cheap  coal- 
tar  products  and  glycerine,  or  cheaper  glucose 
substitutes,  to  give  it  ^^  body." 

Bear  in  mind  also  that  even  the  unadul- 
terated whisky — and  a  little  is  to  be  had — 
contains  usually  the  natural  impurities,  such 
as  fusel  oil  and  creosote;  for,  although  they 
can  be  eliminated  in  the  process  of  manufac- 
ture,  it  is  cheaper  to  let  the   poison   impuri- 


98  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

ties  remain.  Against  these  the  palate  can 
protect  you,  but  it  cannot  protect  you  against 
the  artificial  impurities  and  adulterations.  You 
may  think  you  are  taking  one  poison — the  alco- 
hol you  are  accustomed  to  take;  with  it  you 
are  taking  whatsoever  poisons  the  conscience- 
less, greed-bitten  adulterator  wills  you  shall 
take.  His  dirtiest  dishonesty  leads  him  to  use, 
as  a  basis  for  his  liquor,  wood-alcohol,  a 
deadly  poison,  and  to  impose  upon  the  palate 
by  various  flavors  and  dyes. 

At  an  investigation  held  recently  at  Albany, 
by  the  state  authorities  of  New  York,  a  chem- 
ist (a  great  man — I  know  him;  he  is  my 
friend)  showed  the  commission  the  "  tricks  of 
the  trade."  The  distillers  and  their  experts 
and  tasters  and  lobbyists  were  sent  into  an 
outer  room.  Then  the  chemist  filled  a  score 
of  glasses  with  wood-alcohol.  (The  commis- 
sioners looked  on.)  In  each  glass  he  dropped 
different  chemicals,  making  for  color  and  odor 
and  flavor.  The  expert  whisky-men  were 
called  in.  Their  tasters  took  up  the  glasses, 
one  after  the  other;  and  they  said:  ^' This  is 
gin — this  is  Holland — this  is  rye  whisky,  three 
years  old — this  is  new  Bourbon  whisky — this 


ADULTERATION  —  FALSIFICATION     99 

is  rum — this  is  brandy,  five  years  in  the  cask 
— this  is  Scotch  or  Irish  " — and  so  on. 

Each  of  the  liquors  was  wood-alcohol,  fla- 
vored and  '^  faked  " — wood-alcohol,  the  dead- 
liest poison  that  can  be  sent  against  the  bodily 
tissues. 

And  said  the  chemist:  ^^  An  overwhelming 
per  cent,  of  the  liquors  sold  in  the  United 
States  are  made  just  that  way." 

Poison  added  to  poison;  and  the  drinker  is 
given  his  alcohol  with  fierce,  degrading,  tissue- 
destroying  poisons  on  the  side! 

Come,  fill  up  the  cup  and  fill  up  the  can 
and   toast  the  merry  distiller! 

II 

The  wine-^'  fakers  "  are  no  whit  behind  the 
distillers  of  strong  liquors.  It  is  well-nigh 
impossible  to  purchase  pure  wine.  And  there 
is  a  profligate  outpouring  of  "  wine "  that 
has  never  seen  a  grape  or  a  grape-skin — made 
entirely  out  of  chemicals. 

I  know  a  wine-forger  who — among  his 
friends — makes  no  secret  of  his  business. 
"  Give  me  good  water,"  he  used  to  say,  "  and 


lOo  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

I  will  turn  you  out  a  bottle  of  any  kind  of  wine 
you  like  to  name — while  you  wait." 

A  dispensing  chemist  could  not  make  up 
prescriptions  more  quickly  than  he  manufac- 
tures his  "  wines."  With  a  gill  of  cheap  Cali- 
fornia wine,  water,  a  few  drops  of  vinegar 
and  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  potato-alcohol, 
he  will  make  you  a  quart  of  ''  claret "  while 
you  stand  at  his  elbow.  If  you  want  a  hock  or 
Sauterne,  he  takes  a  little  real  sherry  as  a 
base,  adds  a  little  citric  acidity,  an  astringent, 
like  tannic  acid,  to  dry  it,  spirit  and  water  in 
proportion;  and  there  you  are.  Substitute 
white  sugar  syrup  for  the  tannic  acid  and  you 
have  a  ''  Chablis,"  and  to  ''  age "  it  add  a 
little  glycerine  or  glucose. 

What'll  you  have? 

Here's  a  brandy  made  of  silent  spirit  and 
oenanthic  ether,  colored  and  sweetened  with 
caramel — wood-alcohol  as  a  basis.  An  old  dry 
champagne?  Chemicals  with  a  little  aerated 
water  added  to  the  potato  spirit. 

And  what  will  you  top  off  with? 

Your  forger  ranges  his  bottles  of  benzoic 
acid,  benzoic  ether,  acetic  acid  and  ether, 
oenanthic   ether   and   glycerine   or   glucose;    a 


ADULTERATION  —  FALSIFICATION   loi 

drop  or  two  of  each — then  fills  up  the  glass 
with  wood  or  potato  alcohol  and,  lo,  it  is 
Maraschino!  Do  you  prefer  Kirchwasser?  A 
drop  or  two  of  cochineal  will  "  do  the  trick." 

Liqueurs  and  wines;  nine  times  out  of  ten, 
in  this  country,  you  are  drinking  the  product 
of  the  forger — a  product  that  has  never  seen 
grape-skin  or  grape. 

But  the  Americans  are  not  (despite  the  ef- 
forts of  the  cheery  California  viticulturist)  a 
wine-drinking  race.  It  is  chiefly  for  the  snob 
that  the  wine-forger  forges.  Nor  is  the  wine- 
propaganda  so  loud  and  noisy  as  that  made  by 
the  brewers  and  dispensers  of  beer.  Turn, 
then,  to  beer. 

Ill 

Can  you  buy  a  glass  of  pure  beer,  made  of 
malt  and  hops,  in  the  United  States? 

I  doubt  it — since  a  little  old  man,  a  beer 
enthusiast,  died  over  on  Staten  Island  a  little 
while  ago.  He  was  of  German  extraction, 
having  been  painlessly  extracted  from  Ger- 
many in  his  earliest  youth.  He  came  to  Staten 
Island  long  ago.  In  the  little  garden  behind 
his  house  he  set  up  a  domestic  brewery;  and 


102  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

there — in  this  age  of  adulteration! — he  brewed 
a  real  beer.  But  he  is  dead,  the  little  man, 
and  he  left  no  son. 

I  say  it  is  doubtful  if  you  can  buy  a  glass 
of  pure  beer  in  any  American  "  saloon  " — or 
drink  it  at  any  brewery. 

There  are  nineteen  hop-substitutes;  there  are 
fifteen  malt-substitutes;  so  the  brewer  has  his 
choice.  And  what  does  he  not  choose?  Aloes 
to  give  a  bitter  taste,  soapstone  for  frothiness, 
catechu  for  astringency. 

There  is  one  infallible  test  for  honest  beer — 
stand  a  bottle  of  it  in  the  sun!  What  this  test 
means  I  shall  make  clear  in  a  moment. 

A  few  years  ago  the  advocates  of  pure  food 
— and  drink — tried  to  get  through  the  legis- 
lature at  Albany  a  law  compelling  the  brewers 
to  hold  their  beer  in  lager  for  three  months. 
What  happened?  The  brewers  rose,  screaming 
with  beer-hysteria;  armed  with  clubs  and  finan- 
cial sandbags  they  slew  the  bill.  Why?  What 
was  their  objection  to  the  measure?  In 
France,  in  England,  in  Germany,  beer  must  (so 
runs  the  law)  be  lagered — that  is,  it  must  be 
stored  for  three  months.  There  is  no  objec- 
tion to  the  law  there,  because  the  brewers  are 


ADULTERATION  —  FALSIFICATION    103 

occupied  in  the  relatively  honest  business  of 
making  beer  out  of  malt  and  hops.  In  this 
country — in  the  ordinarily  careless  way  in 
which  they  are  permitted  to  make  beer,  with- 
out any  supervision  or  standard — in  this  coun- 
try, I  repeat,  the  ferment  the  brewers  use 
is  accompanied  by  a  large  amount  of  other 
bacteria,  which  set  up  putrefactive  fermenta- 
tions in  the  organic  matter  accompanying  the 
starches — and  even  in  the  starches  themselves. 
Do  you  see  the  point?  The  ferment  is  not 
inspected  and  it  is  always — not  occasionally — 
impure.  As  a  result  the  beer  ferments  putre- 
factively.  These  putrefactive  changes  go 
steadily  on.  In  order  to  overcome  them,  the 
brewers  add  what  they  are  pleased  to  call 
^^  preservatives."  These  ''  preservatives  "  range 
all  the  way  from  arsenious  acid,  or  what  is 
known  as  white  arsenic  (a  deadly  poison),  to 
salicylic  acid,  which  causes  many  pathological 
injuries  when  used  over  a  period  of  time — 
attacking  notably  the  kidneys  and  irritating  the 
liver. 

The  "  preservatives "  are  poisons  and  they 
are  in  all  American  beer — not  to  mention  the 
large   number   of   substances    added    for   pur- 


104  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

poses  of  taste-deception,  such  as  those  em- 
ployed to  give  "  body,"  ''  grip,''  the  after-taste 
and  so  on. 

Now  pure  beer  could  be  kept  indefinitely. 

It  could  be  kept  even  in  the  sun. 

Whereas  if  a  bottle  of  impure  beer — or 
American  beer  with  its  ^'  preservatives  " — ^were 
left  in  the  sunlight  for  a  few  days,  it  would 
explode  into  rottenness. 

A  fact,  a  dire  fact. 

The  proposed  law,  enacting  that  beer  should 
be  kept  in  lager  for  six  months,  would  have 
put  every  brewery  out  of  business — and  the 
beer  they  make,  kept  thus  in  lager,  would  have 
ended  in  an  explosion  of  rottenness.  It  could 
not  be  kept  for  three  months — or  two.  That 
law  would  have  forced  them  to  brew  honest 
beer. 

One  of  the  authorities  called  in  by  those  be- 
hind the  bill  stated  that  a  hundred  per  cent, 
of  the  beer  brewed  in  the  United  States  was 
bad.  Do  you  want  to  test  the  thing?  Buy  a 
bottle  of  beer  and  stand  it  in  the  sun.  You 
do  not  need  to  take  the  brewer's  word  for  it. 
Put  it  to  the  test — and  sunlight,  that  ancient 
chemist,  stands  ready  at  your  call,  to  make  the 


ADULTERATION  —  FALSIFICATION    105 

test  and  pronounce  the  infallible  judgment. 
The  bacteria  that  set  up  the  putrefactive  fer- 
mentations, working  busily  in  the  sunlight,  will 
rot  it  before  your  eyes — till  the  putrefied  mass 
explodes. 

There  is  an  advertisement  which  is  appear- 
ing in  newspapers  all  over  the  country: 

^'  Light  Bottle  Brewers  Guilty 

''  They  confess  publicly  the  crying  need  for 
protecting  their  beer  from  light — they  admit 
that  the  instant  the  case  is  uncovered,  danger 
from  light  begins — causing  a  chemical  change 
resulting  in  decay,  and  rendering  it  unfit  to 
take  into  the  stomach." 

The  brewer  behind  that  advertisement  states 
that  the  remedy  is  to  sell  beer  in  brown  bottles! 
It  is  one  solution  of  the  problem.  Another 
solution  would  seem  to  be  a  law  forbidding 
the  use  of  "  preservatives  "  in  beer  and  mak- 
ing the  ^'  lagering  "  of  beer  compulsory — so  it 
may  rot,  if  it  be  impure,  in  the  cellars  of  the 
brewer  and  not  in  the  intestines  of  the  citizen. 

My  authority  tells  me  imported  beer  is  well- 
nigh  as  bad,  because,  when  beer  in  England, 
France,  Germany,  Austria  is  condemned  as  bad, 


io6  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

those  governments  still  permit  it  to  be  ex- 
ported. And  we  get  it — as  this  country  is  the 
chief  one  which  has  no  inspection. 

A  law  decreeing  that  beer  must  be  stored 
a  definite  period  would  do  much  to  halt  the 
beer-adulterators.  Were  they  compelled  to 
lager  it  for  six  months,  the  stuff  they  make 
would — at  the  end  of  that  time — be  a  stinking 
mess,  unsalable.  With  the  exception  of  the 
arsenic  and  one  or  two  other  of  the  "  pre- 
servatives "  they  make  use  of,  all  undergo  a 
process  of  disintegration  and  last — as  a  rule — 
only  two  or  three  months. 

Beers  and  ales  alike;  you  have  but  to  let 
the  sunlight  at  them  to  discover  that  they  are 
foul,  putrescent  messes — their  so-called  "  pre- 
servatives "  a  poison-lie. 

What  even  good  beer  does  to  a  man  you 
know;  what  the  beer  the  unguarded  Ameri- 
can is  forced  and  coaxed  into  drinking  does 
to  him  is  a  matter  for  the  pathologist  and 
(I  should  like  to  think  the  law  will  make  it 
so)  for  the  penologist. 


CHAPTER  VI 

WHY  SOME  DRINKERS  ARE 
DRUNKARDS 


There  are  two  kinds  of  drunkards. 

The  one  with  whom  I  am  immediately  con- 
cerned is  described,  with  scientific  exactitude 
of  phrase,  in  the  words:  "a  dissolute  man." 
He  is  one  whose  moral  character  is  being  dis- 
integrated. 

I  need  lay  no  further  stress  upon  the  signs 
and  phenomena  of  intoxication.  The  thought 
you  are  to  take  with  you  is  that  they  are 
accompanied  with  coincident  physical  changes. 
In  other  words,  the  vice,  as  it  progresses, 
trails  with  it  corresponding  diseases  of  the 
body.  The  origin — the  cause — of  these  physi- 
cal degenerations  is  twofold.  In  the  first  place, 
there  are  the  well-defined  effects  produced  by 
the   direct   action   of   alcohol   on    nerve-tissue, 

and  by  the  impoverished  quality  of  the  blood- 

107 


io8  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

supply.  Your  physician — if  he  be  not  that 
dear,  old-fashioned  port-wine-y  person  for 
whom  alcohol  is  still  ''  a  food  " — will  tell  you 
what  this  means.  Roughly,  it  means  a  degen- 
erative breaking  down  of  the  nerve-elements, 
thickening  and  inelasticity  of  the  blood-vessels, 
and  an  overgrowth  of  the  tissue-elements  which 
normally  serve  as  a  mere  groundwork  in  which 
the  nerve-elements  are  imbedded.  (I  have 
used  almost  the  exact  words  of  the  distin- 
guished Scottish  physiologist.  Dr.  George  R. 
Wilson.)  This  is  the  first  causal  factor;  the 
second  has  an  importance  of  its  own — it  is, 
indeed,  the  causa  causans  of  drunkenness.  And 
here  I  shall  ask  you  to  bear  in  mind  the  state- 
ment, already  made,  that  good  conduct,  like 
every  other  mental  habit,  has  an  organic  basis. 
It  has  a  definite  mechanism  of  nerve-cells  and 
fibers.  And — since  the  higher  morality  in  man 
is  a  late  acquisition — the  mechanism  is  recent, 
unstable  and  early  injured.  (Brain  trouble  is 
always   first   indicated    by   moral    lapses.) 

Now,  of  your  two  drunkards,  one  is  morally 
defective  from  the  start — a  moral  imbecile  of 
a  sort;  that  was  the  cause  of  his  taking  to  drink. 
The  other  drunkard  had  to  set  up   a  patho- 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     109 

logical  process  which  would  bring  him  to  the 
same  state  of  moral  imbecility.  The  one  was 
born  to  his  drunken  inheritance,  the  other  pre- 
pared himself  for  it.  The  one  was  diseased 
at  the  start;  the  other  took  his  self-appointed 
way,  through  vice,  to  the  identical  degenerative 
condition  of  disease.  What  that  degeneration 
is  should  get  itself  proclaimed  here,  with  clar- 
ity and  emphasis;  therefore,  I  shall  make  use 
of  Dr.  Maudsley's  authoritative  words: 

"  Good  moral  feeling  is  to  be  looked  upon 
as  an  essential  part  of  a  sound  and  rightly 
developed  character  in  the  present  state  of 
human  evolution  in  civilized  lands.  Its  ac- 
quisition is  the  condition  of  development  in 
the  process  of  humanization.  Whosoever  is 
destitute  of  it  is  to  that  extent  a  defective 
being;  he  marks  the  beginning  of  race- 
degeneracy;  and,  if  propitious  influences  do 
not  chance  to  check  or  to  neutralize  the  morbid 
tendency,  his  children  will  be  actual  morbid 
varieties.  Whether  the  particular  outcome  of 
the  morbid  strain  shall  be  vice  or  madness  or 
crime  will  depend  much  on  the  circumstances 
of  life;  but  there  is  no  doubt  in  my  mind  that 
one   way   in   which   insanity   is    generated    de 


no  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

novo  is  through  the  deterioration  of  nature 
which  is  shown  in  the  absence  of  moral  sense. 
It  was  the  last  acquisition  in  the  progress  of 
humanization,  and  its  decay  is  the  first  sign 
of  human  degeneracy." 

What  is  the  first  sign  of  chronic  alcoholism? 

Deterioration  in  character. 

And,  with  the  drunkard's  vices  and  defects 
in  intelligence,  his  physical  degenerations 
make  equal  and  coincident  progress.  They 
go  together;  but  moral  degradation  has  the 
pas. 

You  have  noticed  how  drunkards  come  to- 
gether, irrespective  of  cast  and  class  conditions. 
It  is  because  all  drunkards  are  alike.  They 
are  members  of  a  dreadful  freemasonry. 
When  you  have  pictured  one  you  have  pic- 
tured all;  for  the  merry  drunkard  is  merely 
at  a  different  stage  from  the  lachrymose  drunk- 
ard— the  brawler  is  a  drunkard  at  a  different 
etape  from  the  amorous  drunkard;  that  is  all. 
It  is  the  same  man,  going  through  the  ''  seven 
stages  "  of  drink — through  elation,  and  depres- 
sion, through  irritability  to  mellowness,  or  to 
the  tearful  stage  of  collapse  and  incapacity; 
the  last  stage  of  all  is  the  sort  of  death  you 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     iii 

know.  Fictionists  and  dramatists  like  to  pic- 
ture him  at  the  mellow  stage,  but  that  is  de- 
ceptive. The  truth  is  the  drunkard  goes 
through  every  one  of  the  stages  in  his  drunken 
day;  and  your  moderate  drinker  (a  thing  to  be 
noted)  does  precisely  the  same  thing  in  a 
fainter,  less  emphatic  manner.  Thus  degen- 
erating atop,  every  man  who  poisons  himself 
regularly  with  alcohol  is  petulant  and  morose, 
selfish  from  organic  ill-being,  talkative  and  a 
liar — 

(An  axiom:  Every  drunkard  is  a  liar  and 
usually  a  bad  liar;  even  your  moderate  drinker 
is  fatally  doomed  to  inexactitude  of  statement. 
He  can,  thank  Heaven!  drink  and  be  sober; 
but  less  and  less  is  it  possible  for  him  to  drink 
and  state  a  precise,  unshaded  truth.) 

He  is  a  liar;  he  began,  it  may  be,  in  gay 
and  imaginative  distortion  of  facts;  then  he 
built  his  lies  for  self-protection— the  lie  of 
the  ''sick  friend"  and  the  like;  but  inevitably 
he  went  easily  to  cruel  and  needless  lying;  he 
lied  for  the  lie's  sake,  because  his  whole  habit 
of  mind — the  standard  of  right  conduct  being 
destroyed — was  toward  dishonesty.  And  he 
knows  he  is  a  liar;  knowing  which  he  has  no 


112  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

faith  in  any  man — and  he  winks  his  skepticism, 
when  he  hears  mention  of  the  common  hon- 
esties of  life.  Always  there  is  the  arrogant 
glorification  of  self  and  the  sneering  vilifica- 
tion of  others.  He  can't  see  above  his  own 
low  level.  And  he  goes  his  way  to  the  one 
vice  which  usually,  in  modest-spoken  society, 
stands  for  all  the  others.  It  is  not  my  business 
to  discuss  sexuality  in  this  book;  but  the  so- 
cial evil  is  so  kneaded  into  the  alcohol  evil — 
in  a  oneness  of  vice — that  they  cannot  be  dis- 
sociated. Drunkards  and  prostitutes  fall  to- 
gether like  a  shock  of  oats.  Drink  and  un- 
chastity  are  unholy,  inseparable  twins. 

Before  I  sat  down  to  write  these  pages  to- 
day, I  looked  over  the  morning  newspaper; 
and  in  the  autobiographical  article  of  '^  Jess  " 
Willard,  the  prize-fighter  (and  there  is  a  clean- 
minded,  right-thinking  man  for  you — a  man 
sane  from  the  top  downwards!),  I  read  these 
words : 

"Vice  and  drunkenness!  The  two  always 
go  together,  and  wherever  they  go  you'll  find 
sickness  and  disease  and  misery. 

''  All  this  may  sound  funny  from  a  prize- 
fighter.    But  just  remember  I  was  a  husband 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     113 

and  a  father  before  I  entered  the  ring.  And, 
because  I  am  champion,  I  figure  that  maybe 
boys  will  listen  to  me  when  they  would  give 
anybody  else  the  laugh  as  a  '  sissy.' 

"  You  can't  be  strong  and  well  unless  you 
live  right.  When  you  go  up  against  nature  you 
get  the  worst  of  it  every  time.  And  nature 
doesn't  stand  for  whisky  and  lust." 

"  The  word  of  a  sane-minded,  sane-bodied 
man,"  said  I;  and  I  turned  the  page.  What  I 
found  was  a  report  of  the  annual  meeting  of 
the  International  Congress  of  Viticulture,  held 
at  the  '^  Old  Faithful  Inn  "  in  San  Francisco. 

Just    as    the    brewers    paraded     Dr.    

at   their   annual    convention,    the   viti- 


culturists  paraded  what  notable  apologist  for 
wine  they  could  capture.  They  captured  a 
woman.  I  shall  not  write  her  name  here, 
though  the  newspapers  display  it  in  big  type. 
She  is  described  as  a  famous  woman,  old  and 
vehement,  "  the  mother  of  suffrage  in  the  state 
of  Oregon."  And,  with  this,  I  shall  quote 
what  she  is  reported  to  have  said  about 
her  sister-suffragists  who  are  working  for 
prohibition  in  the  United  States;  the  report 
reads: 


114  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

"  '  Pussy-wussy/  ^  white-ribboned  sisters  of 
virtue  '  were  some  of  the  epithets  applied  to 
these  agitators  by  Mrs.  ." 

I  was  going  to  quote  her  speech  in  favor 
of  drink,  at  the  conclusion  of  which  ''  the  entire 
assembly  rose  to  its  feet  and  drank  a  toast  to 
her,"  but  why  should  I  quote  the  wine-y  com- 
monplaces you  have  so  often  heard  roared  in 
song?  Let  it  be  as  it  is.  But  I  would  ask 
you  to  compare  these  unwomanly  sneers  of 
"  pussy-wussy  "  and  "  white-ribboned  sisters  of 
virtue" — think!  a  woman  sneers  at  her  sisters 
of  virtue — compare  them,  I  say,  with  the  frank 
and  beautiful  moral  courage  of  the  prize- 
fighter. 

I  know  whose  hand  I  had  rather  take  in 
mine.  I  know  in  whose  house  I  would  more 
proudly  sit  at  table.  And  I  know  that  drink — 
the  perfumed  alcohol  of  wine  like  the  rest  of 
it — begins  its  work  of  moral  degeneration  at 
the  top.  That  scene  at  the  convention  of 
'^  viticulturists  "  is  proof  sufficient.  And  you 
may  have  your  own  opinion  of  those  who  set 
the  poor  old  '^  mother  of  suffrage "  to  plead 
their  poisonous  cause.  (How  did  the  words 
run?    "Add  a  little  wine  to  the  glass  of  water 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     115 

for  the   children  " — breed   your   drunkards   in 
the   cradle.) 

And  so  no  more  of  the  subject.  All  I  had 
to  say  of  that  unchaste  twin  of  drink,  the  prize- 
fighter has  said  in  his  rough,  honest  man's  voice 
— unafraid  of  being  laughed  at  as  a  ''  sissy  " 
or  a  "  pussy-wussy,"  unafraid  of  the  sneers  of 
man  or  woman  at  his  ''  white-ribboned  virtue." 
His  words  are  those  of  a  noble  and  brave  man. 
It  is  pathetic  that  the  sneer  came  from  a 
woman. 

II 

All  drinking  men  and  women  are  broadly 
alike,  when  you  take  them  at  an  equal  point 
in  their  journey  toward  alcoholic  dissolution. 
Of  course  their  emotional  vagaries  differ.  The 
way  of  life,  the  mental  habit,  make  for  various 
exhibitions  of  unchecked  emotion.  Just  how 
the  aberrancy — moral  and  mental — will  express 
itself  depends  upon  education,  environment, 
predisposition.  In  one  alcohol  demands  emo- 
tional expression — and  he  writes  verse.  In  an- 
other a  dark,  brooding  sense  of  religion  is  born, 
and,  like  Kit  Smart,  he  prays  aloud  in  the 
Street.     In  a  third  the  two  impulses  may  be 


ii6  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

combined,  and  you  have  Paul  Verlaine's  wild 
passion  of  poetry  and  prayer.  (Days  of  youth 
r — and  the  dark  tavern  of  Francis  the  First, 
and  Verlaine,  over  his  tenth  glass  of  rum-and- 
water  staring  into  the  abyss  of  his  life;  and 
shrieking!     Helas,  pauvre  Lelianf) 

Wantonness  or  hilarity,  shuddering  gloom  or 
bland,  mindless  optimism,  are  foreshadowings 
of  the  same  pathological  condition.  Self- 
control  is  weakened  and  judgment  is  gone;  and 
what  each  drunkard  exhibits  is  himself — his 
characteristic  emotions — but  he  differs  from 
his  brother-drinkers  only  in  the  color  of  his 
coat.  It  is  the  same  degeneration,  variously 
expressed. 

Two  kinds  of  drunkards. 

In  one  drunkenness  is  a  neurosis — a  dark 
brother  of  epilepsy  and  insanity. 

In  the  other  it  may  be  no  more  than  vice — 
a  failure  to  live  up  to  the  ethical  standard  his 
generation,  at  its  point  of  evolution,  has  fixed. 

Both,  victims  of  alcohol,  are  going  the  same 
road  of  moral  insanity  and  mental  death.  It 
is  Nature's  protest  against  the  poison-violence 
that  has  been  done  her;  it  is  her  indefectible 
sentence  upon  the  criminal.     Do  you  remem- 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     117 

ber  Goethe's  grim  statement  of  this  natural 
law?  It  is  echoing  in  my  memory  as  I  write: 
"  Wenn  die  Natur  verabscheut,  so  spricht  sie 
laut  aus:  das  Geschopf,  das  falsch  lebt,  wird 
friih  zerstort.  Unfruchtbarkeit,  kiimmerliches 
Dasein,  friihzeitiges  Zerfallen,  das  sind  ihre 
Fliiche,  die  Kennzeichen  ihrer  Strenge."  Ay, 
to  the  drunkard  nature  speaks  aloud,  decreeing 
that  he  who  lives  with  a  false  life  shall  be 
soon  destroyed — unfruitfulness,  needy  existence, 
early  destruction,  these  are  her  curses,  the 
tokens   of   her   displeasure. 

Why,  then,  are  some  drinkers  drunkards? 

Why  not  all? 

Why  can  some  men  drink  and  be  sober,  at 
least  on  the  lower  functional  levels,  while 
others  go  swiftly  toward  alcoholic  demen- 
tia? 

It  is  for  the  physiologist  to  answer  these 
questions.  He  will  tell  you  that  the  causation 
of  drink  falls  apart  into  two  divisions — the 
organic  cause  and  the  environmental  cause.  In 
plainer  words,  the  causes  of  the  vice  are: 
Thirst  and  its  Opportunity. 

In  the  United  States  the  opportunities  and 
facilities    for    drinking    alcohol    are    tolerably 


ii8  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

complete.  The  saloon  and  beer-hall  and 
"  cafe,"  the  country  club  and  the  road-house, 
the  cabaret  and  the  brothel  open  their  doors 
at  all  the  crossroads  of  life.  The  historic 
association  of  boon-fellowship  and  drink;  the 
palate-cheating  disguises  of  luxurious  ''  mixed 
drinks  "  wherein  eggs  and  fruits  and  herbs  hide 
the  hard,  repellent  edge  of  alcohol;  the  osten- 
tatious "  have-one-on-me "  habit;  the  dance- 
mania — these  are  the  more  conspicuous  envi- 
ronmental causes,  though  you  can  add  a  dozen 
more. 

Here,  then,  is  the  opportunity.  Here,  then, 
is  the  soil  in  which  the  rank  weed  may  take 
root.  Every  man — every  child  and  woman — 
is  given  the  chance  to  become  a  drunkard. 
And  yet  not  all  drinkers,  we  know,  reach  (ere 
death  steps  in  and  takes  them)  this  end  and 
climax  of  alcoholism.  Many,  some,  not  a  few 
can,  thank  Heaven!  drink  and  be  sober — rela- 
tively. They  have  not  the  same  organic  bent 
toward  drunkenness;  slowly,  by  long-continued 
absorption  of  alcohol,  they  have  to  create  arti- 
ficially those  subjective  conditions  which  make 
for  drunkenness  and  which  the  readier  drunk- 
ard is  born  to  as  to  a  tragic  inheritance. 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     119 

"  Every  human  constitution  has  an  inborn 
bias  toward  some  form  of  ill-health." 

The  potentiality  is  there,  though  the  malady 
may  be  kept  under  by  good  habits  of  life;  the 
proclivity  is  there.  This  bent  toward  a  cer- 
tain disease  is  called,  by  medical  men,  the 
diathesis.  And  your  diathesis  may  be  toward 
gout  or  tuberculosis  or  any  one  of  a  hundred 
maladies.  For  every  human  constitution  there 
is  a  malady  which  must  be  held  at  bay.  The 
alcoholic  diathesis  (like  those  of  insanity  and 
epilepsy)  is  a  predisposition  to  certain  forms 
of  nervous  disease.  In  other  words,  there  is 
a  kind  of  brain  that  reacts  (more  readily  than 
others)  to  alcohol.  It  is  more  susceptible  to 
the  poison,  lends  itself  more  readily  to  alco- 
holic dissolution.  It  may  be  in  many  respects 
a  good  brain.  It  may  be  the  brain  of  Edgar 
Allan  Poe,  or  that  of  James  Thomson  or  Paul 
Verlaine  or  Alfred  de  Musset.  (Verlaine's 
confession  you  know;  and  Poe,  in  a  profoundly 
sad  page,  analyzed  his  dark  neurosis — his 
drink-storms  were  the  explosive  signals  of 
disease,  not  of  vice.)  What  it  lacks  is  sta- 
bility— a  sound  co-ordination  of  the  nervous 
system — an  equitable  adjustment  of  the  func- 


I20  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

tional  levels.  They  are  an  excitable  race,  im- 
patient of  the  commonness  of  life — its  quotidian 
regularity;  they  crave  cerebral  stimulation. 
These  men  come  into  the  w^orld  apt  for  drunk- 
enness. They  are  organized  for  it.  Given  the 
opportunity — placed  in  the  environment  of 
drink — their  predisposition  leads  straight  to 
alcoholism.  Where  other  men  are  drinkers, 
they  are  drunkards. 

Is  this  a  hereditary  curse  laid  upon  them, 
you  ask? 

Is  it  because  his  father  was  a  drunkard  that 
he,   too,   is   drink's  victim? 

By  no  means;  drunkenness  is  not  hereditary; 
the  reproduction  of  our  kind  is  well-nigh  inde- 
pendent of  our  environment  and  it  is  unin- 
fluenced by  changes  set  up  during  the  lifetime 
of  the  individual;  acquired  conditions,  morbid 
or  otherwise,  cannot  be  transmitted  to  pos- 
terity— modern  science  avers  it. 

But  (a  but  of  emphasis)  what  can  be  trans- 
mitted is  a  peculiar  nervous  organization, 
favorable  to  a  certain  diathesis — a  certain 
predisposition;  and  environment  does  the  rest. 
You  cannot  transmit  vice — defective  morals — 
to  your  son;  that  he  must  acquire  and  must 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     121 

personally  answer  for;  what  you  do  give 
him  is  a  nervous  organization  in  which  your 
peculiar  vice  most  readily  takes  root.  That 
is  the  real  truth  about  heredity.  You  pass 
on  an  unstable  nervous  system  in  which  the 
potentiality  lies — whether  that  potentiality 
shall  be  developed  or  checked  is  within  the 
will  of  your  son.  Were  not  the  environment 
there — had  not  your  son  to  walk  abroad  in 
a  drink-poisoned  world — that  potentiality 
would  never  bear  its  poisoned  fruit  of  drunk- 
enness and  degeneration.  His  was  the  choice 
whether  he  should  be  a  drunkard  or  a  free 
man;  only  he  had  to  fight  a  stronger  tendency 
than  other  men.  The  thing  that  slays  him 
is  not  an  inborn  thirst;  it  is  the  social  environ- 
ment— the  smell  of  drink  and  the  drunken  cry 
of  boon-fellowship  at  all  the  crossroads  of  life 
that  pull  him  down. 

Have  I  made  it  clear  why  some  drinkers  are 
drunkards?  Why  they  go  swiftly  to  an  end 
the  moderate  drinker  reaches  more  slowly — 
though  it  be  the  same  end?  They  are  born 
to  nervous  disorder;  they  have  it  thrust  upon 
them  in  the  cradle;  and  that  identical  nervous 
disorder    (which    in    its    last    stage    produces 


122  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

alcoholism)  the  moderate  drinker  is  deter- 
minedly, artificially,  inexcusably  creating  for 
himself.  For  the  diathetic  drunkard  one  may 
have  a  kind  of  pity — he  is  the  victim  of  a 
civilization,  boozily  organized  for  his  un- 
doing; as  for  the  others,  whose  imbecile  aim 
in  life  is  to  drink  and  be  sober  enough  to 
escape  being  hauled  up  before  the  "  beak " 
as  "  drunk  and  disorderly,"  one  has  only  an 
amazed  sort  of  contempt.  They  are,  by  pro- 
fession, an  unprofitable  and  disreputable  tribe. 
The  man  who  comes,  a  moral  imbecile,  into 
a  world  too  drink-laden  for  him  to  resist  de- 
mands a  fool's  pardon;  but  the  man  who  sets 
about  making  himself  a  mental  imbecile — who 
poisons  himself  atop,  willfully  and  in  cold, 
unclamoring  blood — is  deliberately  criminal. 
My  word,  he's  the  worse  of  the  two!  Of  his 
own  will,  untempted  and  unforced,  he  has 
taken  to  that  alcoholic  kind  of  poison,  which 
is  of  all  poisons  the  most  subtly  dangerous. 

Dangerous?  It  has  filled  more  graves  than 
sword  and  famine  and  plague — more  than  all 
the  hostile  powers  of  nature. 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     123 

III 

Women  and  babies 


Men  still  alive  and  not  incredibly  old  re- 
member when  the  social  habit  of  the  United 
States  was  tolerably  sober.  Notably  the  women 
did  not  drink — nice  women  did  not  drink; 
women  of  the  lower,  the  middle  and  the  upper 
classes  took  a  social  pride  in  being  sober 
brides  and  sober  mothers.  The  old  eight- 
eenth-century habit  of  putting  the  bridegroom 
drunk  to  bed,  which  is  so  prominent  in  the 
English  fiction  and  memoirs  of  the  period, 
never  obtained  in  this  country.  The  early 
Puritans,  who  cast  the  matrix  of  the  nation, 
were  a  sober  lot.  Indeed,  the  larger  part 
of  them  was  made  up  of  total  abstainers.  As 
the  villages  grew  into  towns  and  cities,  society 
became  more  and  more  boozily  organized. 
Immigration  furnished,  also,  a  race  of  mothers 
more  definitely  given  to  the  alcohol  habit  than 
v/as  the  native  stock.  The  result  has  been 
startling,  for  exactly  in  proportion  with  the 
increase  in  the  consumption  of  alcohol,  has 
been  the  lowering  of  the  birth-rate.  In  the 
year  ending  19 14  the  birth-rate  in  the  United 


124  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

States  diminished  eleven  and  four-tenths  per 
cent.  And  there  is  a  corollary  to  this  grim 
fact:  in  spite  of  fewer  births — in  spite  of  the 
efforts  of  science  and  philanthropy  to  enforce 
euthenic  ways  of  life — there  is  a  steady  and 
measurable  increase  in  the  tendency  to  alcohol- 
ism and  its  accompanying  racial  degeneration. 
It  is  the  ''  last  word  of  science,"  according 
to  that  unimpeached  authority,  the  Lancet,  that 
"  alcoholic  parents  are  liable  to  have  children 
who  are  degenerate — ^weak  in  body  and  feeble 
in  mind,  with  a  tendency  to  become  paupers, 
criminals,  epileptics  and  drunkards."  They 
inherit  a  tendency  toward  vice — though  the 
impulse  may  not  be  especially  toward  the 
drunken  form  of  viciousness.  And  in  this 
weakening  and  degrading  of  the  race  the 
alcoholic  mother  bears  a  heavier  responsi- 
bility than  her  mate.  The  reasons  for  this  fact 
go  back  into  an  embryology  which  there  is 
no  need  of  discussing  here.  The  point  I 
would  make  is  this:  abstemious  motherhood 
does  much  to  offset  the  grave  results  brought 
upon  the  children  by  alcoholic  fatherhood. 
For  the  child  of  a  drunken  father  there  is 
little  hope;   if   the  mother,   also,   is   poisoned. 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     125 

more  or  less,  with  alcohol  there  is  no  hope. 
The  future  of  the  race  depends  upon  the 
mothers. 

A  commonplace,  you  say? 

Unquestionably;  and  a  "commonplace"  is 
merely  a  recognition  of  one  of  those  dominant 
truths  which  need  no  formal  demonstration. 
This  particular  commonplace  cannot  get  it- 
self too  often  stated.  Upon  the  mothers  de- 
pends the  future  of  the  race.  And  the  mothers 
who  accustom  themselves  to  alcoholic  poison, 
even  before  they  are  ready  for  their  chil- 
dren, are  preparing  a  race,  doomed — in  heed- 
less anticipation — to  the  madhouse,  the  prison, 
or  dingier  and  less  tragic  forms  of  social 
failure. 

If  the  mother  drinks,  even  before  she  is 
ready  for  her  children,  she  is  preparing 
for  them  a  physical  inheritance  of  degen- 
eration. Do  not  take  it  too  seriously.  It 
may  be,  to  be  sure,  merely  a  predisposition 
to  some  form  of  degeneration.  It  may  be  so 
slightly  vicious  an  inheritance — especially  if 
the  father  be  a  clean  man — that  the  child's 
handicap  is  negligible  to  a  degree  in  this 
boozily  organized  world.     But,  great  or  small. 


126  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

it  is  there — a  handicap  to  be  weighed  and 
measured  like  the  lead-pad  on  a  race-horse. 
Her  drinking  of  alcohol  does  not  foredoom 
her  unborn  child  to  drunkenness;  it  merely 
handicaps  the  child  in  its  life-race. 

It  is,  however,  possible  for  a  child,  born 
of  parents  eugenically  fit,  to  be  started  on  a 
career  of  drunkenness  in  the  cradle.  Many 
are  so  started. 

These  are  strong  words,  but  behind  them 
is  ample  authority.  The  physician  who  has 
had  much  to  do  with  the  failures  in  life — 
the  mental  and  nervous  wrecks,  the  victims 
of  drugs  and  drink-storms,  dissolute  and  im- 
moral women — always  looks  carefully  into  the 
"  early  history  "  of  his  patient.  It  is  of  first 
importance  for  him  to  learn  how,  as  a  baby, 
the  unfortunate  one  was  nursed,  fed  and 
soothed.  Dr.  William  Lee  Howard  has  spe- 
cialized in  the  study  of  baby  drunkards,  and 
has  made  an  admirable  statement  of  his  in- 
vestigations.    Read   here: 

"  Friends  and  relatives  are  frequently  puz- 
zled and  shocked  to  find  a  young  man  of 
excellent  parentage  unable  to  conform  to  the 
conventionalities  of  life.     He  goes  on  sprees, 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     127 

lies,  is  unable  to  hold  a  business  or  social 
position,  and,  as  a  rule,  ends  his  disgraceful 
career  in  a  sanatorium  or  jail.  A  young  woman 
whose  family  has  been  known  for  its  moral 
and  physical  balance,  whose  mother,  grand- 
mother, father  and  all  her  kin  have  been 
of  the  best  stock  and  habits,  secretly  takes 
to  drink.  She  becomes  uncontrollable.  Some 
day  the  public  is  astounded  by  a  scandal 
— the  young  woman  has  gone  wrong  through 
drink.  And  right  here  I  wish  to  say  that  our 
cursed  prudery  and  hypocrisy  have  prevented 
our  girls  knowing  the  real  truth  about  the 
danger  of  taking  the  smallest  sort  of  alcoholic 
drink.  Nothing  on  this  earth,  and  probably 
nothing  off  it,  will  so  quickly  stimulate  a 
young  woman  or  girl  to  wrong  impulses,  so 
powerfully  paralyze  good  moral  instincts,  as 
alcohol.  Especially  true  is  this  in  the  girl 
from  fourteen  to  twenty  years  old.  Ninety  per 
cent,  of  the  girls  who  go  wrong  will  tell  you 
that  they  fell  before  the  teasing  effects  of 
drink. 

^^  In  tracing  the  early  life  of  most  of  these 
cases  of  habitual  drunkenness,  incompetency 
and  drug  habits,  we  find  the  child  was,  dur- 


128  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

ing    its    nursing    period,    kept    on    alcohol    or 
drugsf^ 

The  physician  followed  the  career  of  many 
of  these  cradle  drunkards.  Death  was  busy 
with  them.  He  noted  that  many  deaths,  attrib- 
uted to  malnutrition,  to  anemia,  intestinal 
troubles  and  convulsions,  were  in  reality  due  to 
alcoholic  poisoning.  The  stark  children,  eu- 
genically  born,  lived  through  the  years  of 
baby  drunkenness  and  they  came  to  the  "  play 
age,"  with  its  wonderful  recuperative  power, 
fresh  air  and  freedom  from  brain  and  nerve 
worry.  They  could  get  along  without  the 
stimulant.  Nature  supplied  a  better  one. 
''  But  nerve-  and  brain-cells,"  I  am  quoting 
Dr.  Howard,  ^' are  not  strong;  they  have  lost 
forever  those  elements  which  in  childhood  go 
to  nourish  them.  They  can  never  get  back 
these  destroyed  vital  elements.  Now  comes 
the  time  in  life  when  nerve  balance,  brain 
power,  all  the  God-given  forces  in  man  are 
needed.  Many  of  these  unfortunates  are  am- 
bitious, moral,  determined  to  succeed  in  life's 
struggle.  They  try,  try.  They  fail,  fail.  It 
is  not  possible  for  them  to  stand  the  strain — 
the  forces  are  not  there.    Then  comes  the  cry 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS     129 

— that  old  cradle  cry  for  relief.  Alcohol  gives 
them  such  false  power  that  it  is  tried  again. 
In  the  woman  it  is  generally  morphine.  We 
all  know  the  end  of  these  pathetic  cases." 

There  is  another  and  subtler  way  in  which 
the  nursing  mother  may  administer  alcohol 
to  the  child.  She  has  but  to  take  her  '^  for- 
tifying tonic/'  her  bottle  of  stout,  her  much 
advertised  ''  malt  liquor "  and  just  as  surely 
the  baby  will  take  in,  with  each  meal,  a  quan- 
tity of  alcohol.  And  your  modern  physician 
(not  rosy  from  port)  asserts  that  the  result, 
when  it  comes  to  manhood  or  womanhood,  is 
just  the  same  as  is  seen  in  the  other  kinds 
of  infant  drunkenness. 

This  is  a  dismal  picture;  but  it  does  not 
picture  the  facts  with  perfect  accuracy.  There 
is  another  side  to  the  question.  In  fairness 
to  the  ^'  viticulturists "  and  the  brewers  it 
should  be  stated.  Precisely  as  one  may  fend 
off  smallpox  by  injections  of  a  smallpox  vac- 
cine, so  one  may  breed  a  race  which  can 
absorb  alcohol.  There  is  no  apter  illustra- 
tion than  that  of  Mithridates,  who  made  him- 
self poison-proof  by  daily  increased  doses  of 
poison.    Nature  does  not  (as  I  have  insisted) 


I30  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

transmit  a  craving  for  drink.  Had  she  done 
so  the  world  had  long  ago  been  depopulated — 
perishing  in  wild,  alcoholic  dissolution.  What 
Nature  does,  in  a  patient  way,  is  to  try  and 
increase  the  power  of  resisting  the  poison- 
effects  of  alcohol.  She  tries  to  produce  a 
body  upon  which  alcohol  will  act  with  the 
least  possible  effect  and  the  leas't  possible 
injury.  Thus  you  get  your  man  who  is  not 
so  much  affected  by  alcohol  as  is  your  normal 
unpoisoned  man.  Generation  after  generation 
she  goes  on  perfecting  that  kind  of  man,  until 
to  him  alcohol  is  not  a  swiftly  fatal  poison. 
Her  method  is  a  singular  one.  Its  tendency 
is  to  weed  out  of  the  race  the  individuals 
who  find  the  highest  pleasure  in  alcoholic 
exhilaration.  The  survivors  are  those  who 
have  a  weak  tendency  to  alcoholism.  The  sur- 
vivors are  those,  who,  poisoned  on  the  higher 
functional  levels,  are  dulled  to  the  keener  ex- 
citements of  alcoholic  stimulation.  They  are 
— it  is  true — "  vaccinated  "  against  alcoholic 
explosions.  They  have  acquired  a  feeble  but 
persistent  state  of  alcoholism,  which  insures 
them  against  the  more  violent  forms.  It  is 
something   of   this   sort  you   get   in   Southern 


WHY  SOME  ARE  DRUNKARDS      131 

Europe,  where  dwell  the  races  which  have 
had  the  largest  experience  of  alcoholic  drink. 
Alcoholic  degeneration  is  more  uniformly 
spread  over  the  race;  it  does  not  reach — so 
often  as  in  the  less  experienced  North — such 
high  points  of  mania  and  crime.  Nature  there 
has  done  her  best  to  develop  a  kind  of  human 
animal  that  could  live  and  propagate  in  spite 
of  his  indulgence  in  poison;  and  she  has  kept 
the  race  alive.  It  can  be  done.  You  can 
breed  a  race  which,  though  it  be  not  wholly 
immune  to  the  poison,  can  live.  It  lives, 
though  on  a  lower  level.  It  lives  merely  by 
the  survival  of  those  who  are  fittest  to  cope 
with  a  poison  that  eliminates  the  finer  and 
more  susceptible  part  of  the  race.  That  is 
the   Sibylline  price  paid. 

Why  are  some  drinkers  drunkards? 

The  answer,  as  you  see,  is  tripartite. 

Your  drunkard  may  be  one  who  is  morally 
defective  from  the  start — a  moral  imbecile. 
Given  a  boozy  environment  and  his  end  is 
certain  and  evident  as  a  rock.  And  your  other 
drunkard  may  have  an  organic  weakness  that 
predisposes  him  to  drunkenness  or  any  other 
form  of  vice  which  comes  most  readily  to  in- 


132  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

fluence  him.  Your  third  drunkard,  eugenically 
born,  is  the  most  pathetic  victim — poisoned  at 
the  breast,  fitted  for  alcoholic  degeneration 
in  his  cradle. 

And  were  you  to  ask  why  (conversely)  some 
drinkers  are  not  drunkards,  one  finds  two  good 
reasons:  The  first  is  that  they  die  in  time; 
the  second  is  that,  by  racial  inheritance,  they 
can  live,  seemingly  normal,  in  a  subdued  state 
of  alcoholic  poisoning  in  which  a  clean  man 
would  frightfully  perish.  And  possibly  that 
death,  for  a  man  of  moral  aspiration,  were 
the  cleanlier  and  nobler  end. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THERAPEUTICS 


You  have  seen,  I  think,  with  tolerable 
clearness,  what  drink  does  to  the  man.  We 
have  been  considering  him  as  an  individual, 
not  as  a  unit  in  the  state,  with  duties  civic 
and  social.  In  a  succeeding  chapter  I  want 
to  look  at  him  in  a  broader  way,  for  his  de- 
generation is  symbolic — it  is  the  measure  of 
a  nation's  degeneration.  For  the  moment  the 
question  is:  Has  science  found  a  cure  for  the 
drink  evil  in  the  individual  man?  Can  it  cure 
the  dipsomaniac,  that  unhappy  man  who  is 
beaten  upon  now  and  then  by  wild,  fierce  and 
fleeting  drink-storms?  And,  of  more  real 
importance  to  this  inquiry,  can  it  cure  the 
so-called  moderate  drinker — he  who  does  not 
seem  to  be  abnormal — whose  palsies  and  tox- 
emias are  safely  hidden  from  the  casual  ob- 
servation?    Is  there  a  cure  for  that  pathetic 

133 


134  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

optimist  who  can  drink,  he  avers,  and  be 
sober? 

Drunkenness  is  more  preventable  than  cur- 
able. If  you  look  back,  merely  for  a  genera- 
tion, you  will  see  how  wide  a  field  has  been 
left  open  to  the  quack  and  the  adventurer. 
Your  morning  newspaper  brings  you  the  ad- 
vertisement of  more  than  one  nostrum  for 
"  destroying  the  drink-habit."  All  of  which 
is  tragic — like  Lear's  fool — in  spite  of  its 
buffoonery.  One  charlatan  prints  his  chal- 
lenge to  cure  drunkenness  by  hypnotism.  An- 
other— no  less  a  charlatan,  because  of  the  fact 
that  he  is  consumed  with  spiritual  zeal — as- 
pires to  pray  it  away,  or  bury  it  in  platform 
rhetoric.  And  the  medical  man  has  his  sana- 
toria. The  reformers  would  whip  it  as  a  vice. 
They  see  that  one  evident  result  of  drink  is 
moral  deterioration.  And  they  would  pun- 
ish the  individual  for  this  moral  lapse.  (With 
similar  logic  the  Middle  Ages  lashed  the 
maniac  because  he  showed  signs  of  his  mad- 
ness.) The  difficulty  here  is  that  the  popular 
mind  has  an  instinctive  reluctance  to  attribute 
moral   defects   to   physical   causes. 

And  the  medical  men? 


THERAPEUTICS  135 

I  think  the  man  who  has  made  the  most 
special  study  of  inebriety  is  Dr.  Crothers,  of 
Hartford.  In  a  paper  which  he  read  before 
a  recent  convention  of  the  American  Medical 
Association,  he  touched  upon  this  illusion  of 
the  popular  mind.  With  a  great  deal  of  jus- 
tice he  holds  that  it  is  one  of  the  chief  ob- 
stacles in  the  way  of  the  scientific  treatment 
of  alcoholism  and  inebriety.  Here  is  his 
argument: 

'^  The  so-called  moderate  drinker  is  always 
more  or  less  a  paretic  and  toxemic,  with  de- 
generations and  depressions  of  every  organ  of 
the  body.  The  premonitory  symptoms  may 
be  localized  in  deranged  metabolism,  circula- 
tion and  psychic  capacity. 

^'  Laboratory  studies  show  that  the  continued 
use  of  spirits,  even  in  small  doses,  is  anesthetic, 
corrosive  and  cumulative;  that  toxins  from 
without  and  within  are  constantly  present  and 
being  formed.  Bacterial  infections  and  in- 
flammatory conditions  always  follow  in  va- 
rious degrees.  The  premonitory  symptoms  are 
so  general  and  are  often  so  masked  as  to  be 
overlooked. 

"  The  common  congested   face,   furtive  eye 


136  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

and  diminished  muscular  activities  of  the  alco- 
holic indicate  an  internal  condition  which  is 
increasing  constantly.  The  final  conclusion 
I  wish  to  make  prominent  is  that  the  neurosis 
of  inebriety  and  the  toxemias  of  alcoholism 
constitute  a  distinct  field  for  medical  practice, 
which  has  not  yet  been  occupied.  To-day  the 
quacks  with  their  boasted  discoveries  are  doing 
the  work  which  the  educated  physicians  should 
do. 

"  Every  physician  has  patients  of  this  class, 
who  need  care  and  treatment,  and  yet  he  is 
rarely  able  to  understand  their  condition, 
much  less  to  give  proper  means  and  measures 
for  relief  and  help. 

"  There  are  hundreds  of  these  neglected  men 
and  women  in  every  community  who  could  be 
restored  and  permanently  cured  who  now, 
through  neglect,  drift  into  the  ranks  of  crimi- 
nals, paupers  and  dependents,  becoming  incur- 
able and  burdens.  Physicians  themselves  fur- 
nish a  proportion  of  victims,  which  is  pitiful, 
because   preventable. 

^'  If  our  medical  schools  would  teach  the 
facts  that  are  at  present  known,  a  revolution 
would  follow  at  once.     The  few  workers  on 


THERAPEUTICS  *      137 

this  frontier  land  realize  possibilities  that  are 
startling  in  the  study  and  treatment  of  in- 
ebriates and  alcoholics. 

"  What  we  need  is  to  put  aside  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  past,  which  have  come  down  to 
us  as  settled  facts,  and  when  examined  in  the 
light  of  modern  science  are  delusions  of  the 
most  pronounced  character.  Teachers,  lead- 
ers and  varied  interests,  both  commercial  and 
otherwise,  hold  us  back  from  scientific  inves- 
tigation and  the  application  of  means  and  reme- 
dies that  will  effectually  clear  away  the  fog- 
banks  of  delusions  and  traditions  that  hang 
about  this  great  modern  plague." 

In  this  statement  there  is  no  real  blame  laid 
upon  medical  science;  and  if  the  physicians 
were,  in  old  days,  too  slow  in  popularizing 
their  medical  learning  that  reproach  is  no 
longer  just.  Their  modern  therapeutical  lit- 
erature is  ample  and  lies  ready  to  the  hand. 
Only  the  more  elderly  doctors  fail  to  recog- 
nize that  the  measure  of  a  man's  drunkenness 
is  the  measure  of  his  mental  impairment  and 
his  physical  degeneration.  There  is  no  dis- 
agreement as  to  the  symptoms  of  the  disease; 
there  is  slight  diversity  as  to  the  treatment. 


138  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

And  here  is  the  main  fact. 

Your  inebriate — swept  by  periodic  drink- 
storms — is  ill;  your  moderate  drinker,  tippling 
diurnally,  is  ill;  now  the  kind  of  treatment 
demanded  by  his  alcoholic  state  depends  upon 
his  general  health;  and — I  would  emphasize 
this — only  the  qualified  medical  man  can  pre- 
scribe the  special  medicinal  treatment  suited 
to  his  case.  (And  by  the  "  qualified  medical 
man "  I  do  not  mean  the  rosy,  obese,  port- 
wine-y  physician,  whereof  there  has  been 
mention;  I  distinctly  mean  the  physician  who 
is  an  expert  in  the  disease  of  inebriety,  exactly 
as  his  confrere  is  an  expert  in  pulmonary  tu- 
berculosis or  in  diseases  of  the  eye.)  In  such 
a  patient  one  thing  has  been  assumed.  It  has 
been  taken  for  granted  that  he  has  the  Will- 
to-be-Sober.  The  assumption  is  that  he  wishes 
to  check  the  degenerations  due  to  alcohol. 
Whether  he  can  ever  be  the  man  he  was, 
physically,  mentally,  morally,  is  a  question 
only  his  physician  can  determine,  but  unques- 
tionably medical  science  can  put  him  back 
among  sober  men.  It  may  be  the  drink  obses- 
sion will  vanish — in  obedience  to  what  laws 
and    forces    I    know    not — merely    that    other 


THERAPEUTICS  139 

psychoses  may  take  its  place;  or  the  physical 
degenerations  and  disorders  may  persist,  long 
after  the  alcoholic  causes  have  been  abolished. 
So,  possibly,  there  is  a  sad  price  to  be  paid; 
but  if  he  have  the  Will-to-be-Sober,  science 
can  take  him  in  hand,  make  him  sober,  keep 
him  sober — exactly  as  it  can  mend  a  broken 
leg,  though  not  perhaps  without  leaving  a  scar 
and  a  limp. 

And  so  I  am  leaving  the  therapeutics  to 
the  qualified  men  of  medical  science,  for  each 
case,  as  I  have  said,  is  an  individual  one. 
There  are  no  cure-alls. 

There  is,  however,  another  side  to  the  treat- 
ment which  falls  within  the  purpose  of  this 
book;  and  that  is  the  moral  side.  It  is  of 
equal  importance.  Indeed,  without  it  the 
medical  treatment  is  a  mere  crutch.  The  prob- 
lem is  not  without  its  difficulty. 

Here,  for  example,  is  the  man  who  does  not 
get  drunk.     He  is  not  one  of  those  who 

"  Go  mad  and  beat  their  wives, 
Plunge,   after  shocking  lives, 
Razors  and  carving-knives 
Into  their  gizzards." 


I40  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

He  takes  his  drink  in  a  gentlemanly  way,  at 
home,  in  his  club;  he  is  always,  more  or  less, 
in  a  low-keyed  state  of  alcoholic  stimulation. 
Both  in  the  legal  and  social  sense  of  the  word 
he  is  ^^  sober " — maintaining,  that  is,  a  fair 
level  of  equilibrium.  Of  all  drinking  men 
he  is  the  hardest  to  cure.  He  has  not  the 
Will-to-be-Sober.  He  has  not  yet  incurred 
the  savager  penalties — physical  and  mental — 
of  alcoholism.  And,  therefore,  he  can  still 
laugh  at  the  dark  forecasts  of  the  qualified 
medical  man.  Moreover,  you  cannot  appeal 
to  his  moral  nature.  That  part  of  him  is  con- 
fused and  darkened.  His  very  way  of  life 
strips  him  of  the  qualities  that  make  most  for 
moral  discriminations.  If  you  appeal  to  him 
on  moral  grounds,  he  stares  at  you;  it  is  like 
arguing  about  color  with  a  blind  man. 

And  here  psychology  has  a  word  to  say. 

Drunkenness,  psychologically  considered,  is 
a  kind  of  monomania — what  is  called  a  perver- 
sion of  attention.  The  drunkard  can  give  his 
attention  only  to  one  series  of  suggestions — 
like  your  hypnotized  subject.  So  far  as  other 
suggestions  are  concerned,  his  senses  are  dulled. 
His  interest  is  centered  on  that  one  thing.     In 


THERAPEUTICS  141 

a  lesser  degree  the  same  thing  is  true  of  the 
moderate  drinker.  Consciously  or  subcon- 
sciously, too  large  a  part  of  his  life  is  centered 
in  that  ounce-or-two-a-day  of  alcohol. 

How  are  you  going  to  shift  his  interest? 

He  is  deaf  to  the  moral  appeal.  Indeed, 
before  he  can  even  hear  it  you  must  rebuild 
his  character,  which  his  way  of  life  has  de- 
graded. It  is  only  by  making  him  alive  to 
new  interests  that  you  can  shake  him  out  of 
his  dull  absorption  in  the  pleasure  to  be  got 
from  the  warmth  and  glow  and  excitement  of 
drink. 

You  must  put  something  else  into  his  life. 

How  true  this  is — how  one  interest  drives 
out  another — you  might  have  seen  in  the  first 
few  months  of  the  war,  had  you  been  in  Eu- 
rope. A  few  days  after  the  storm  broke  I  was 
in  one  of  the  great  hotels  in  Lucerne,  where 
a  cosmopolitan  "  smart  set "  was  gathered, 
idling  in  hundreds.  Now,  the  basis  of  that 
social  life  was  drink — from  the  rosy  Briton 
who  marked  the  time  of  day  by  successive 
whiskies-and-soda,  and  the  graceful  Frenchman 
for  whom  five  o'clock  meant  absinthe,  to  the 
beer-drinkers   for   whom   time   did   not   exist. 


142  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

War  came;  and  a  strange  thing  happened.  The 
series  of  drink-suggestions  was  broken  in  upon 
by  the  vivider  and  more  compelling  thought 
of  war.  And  men  stopped  drinking  long  be- 
fore the  nations  put  the  ban  on  drink.  I  have 
still  in  mind  a  red-faced  Englishman  who  stood 
one  day  in  the  deserted  bar  of  the  National. 
It  had  been  his  boast  that  he  had  been  weaned 
on  brandy;  and,  though  he  had  never  been 
^'  drunk  "  in  his  life,  he  said,  he  had  never  gone 
without  his  five  "  tots "  of  brandy  a  day.  A 
glass  of  it  stood  on  the  bar  in  front  of 
him.  He  lifted  the  glass  and  set  it  down 
again. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  it?  "  I  asked. 

"  Somebody  has  put  a  corpse  in  the  barrel,'' 
he  said,  and  went  away,  leaving  the  tall  glass 
on   the  bar. 

A  mightier  interest  had  slain  in  him  the 
old,  habitual  monomania  for  alcohol.  There 
was  a  discord  between  the  dirty  exhilaration 
of  drink  and  the  high  and  splendid  vibrations 
wakened  in  him  by  humanity's  peril  in  a  world 
at  war.  And  what  was  true  of  that  man  was 
true  of  every  man  in  the  war-zone.  In  the 
first  two  months  of  the  war,  in  all  that  tragic 


THERAPEUTICS  143 

world  behind  the  three-hundred-mile  battle- 
line,  I  saw  only  one  man  drunk.  And  uni- 
versal reprobation  pursued  him  as  he  reeled 
along.  It  was  as  though  humanity  had  been 
blasted  into  sobriety  by  the  mere  horror  of 
war. 

A  new  interest. 

And  with  your  drinking-man — especially 
your  moderate  drinker — a  similar  rule  holds 
good;  there  must  be  a  new  interest  to  drive  out 
the  old  one.  You  must  bear  in  mind  that  you 
can  expect  little  aid  from  him.  In  him  un- 
selfish interest  is  at  its  lowest.  The  power 
of  attention  in  him  is  weak.  His  energy,  too, 
is  at  low  ebb.  Any  influence  must  be  from 
without. 

II 

You  can't  knock  him  on  the  head. 

It  is  not  being  done,  although  the  medical 
books  are  full  of  instances  of  men  who  have 
been  accidentally  knocked  into  a  new  way  of 
thought  and  action.  There  is  a  notable  case 
of  a  burglar  who  was  regenerated  by  a  chimney- 
pot falling  on  his  head.  A  "  new  area  of  nerv- 
ous mechanism  "  was  called  into  being  and  it 


144  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

was  cerebrally  impossible  for  the  man  to  go 
on  being  the  burgling  kind  of  man  he  was  be- 
fore the  accident.  Now  you  cannot  knock  the 
drinking-man's  head  about,  but  you  can  knock 
at  his  heart.  You  can  give  him  a  new  interest. 
And  at  last  analysis  you  will  find  that  every 
attempt  at  getting  him  to  be  sober  is  based 
upon  a  recognition  of  this  old  truth,  which 
is  known  as  the  physiology  of  change.  It  is 
a  truth  and  it  is  a  law  of  organic  evolution: 
whatever  is  new  prevails — at  least  for  the  time 
being.  A  shift  in  the  kaleidoscope — a  new 
view  of  life — awakens  a  new  and  exclusive 
interest.  The  invention  of  the  moving-picture 
took  thousands  of  men  away  from  drink,  for  it 
absorbed  their  attention  in  a  new  line  of 
thought.  They  got  their  exhilaration  through 
the  eye  instead  of  by  way  of  the  stomach.  A 
new  enthusiasm  drove  out  the  old  monomania. 
This  is  the  kind  of  ^'  reform  "  brought  about 
by  the  vehement  rhetoric  of  the  Billy  Sunday 
sort.  This  is  what  happens  in  the  slum- 
mission  when  some  degraded  wretch  stumbles 
forward,  dazed  with  the  sudden  blaze  of  new 
interest,  and  ''  gets  religion."  A  wilder  emo- 
tionalism has  swept  away  the  old  monomania. 


THERAPEUTICS  145 

Now  it  is  exactly  true  that  often  the  old  habit 
is  thus  destroyed — as  though  a  chimney-pot  had 
fallen  upon  it;  and  that  the  new  interest 
builds  up  strength  of  character,  purpose, 
honor. 

The  love  interest  is  quite  as  potent.  You 
will  have  observed  that  the  man  in  love — if 
his  love  be  of  the  finer  sort — usually,  in  fact 
always,  turns  away  from  his  cups.  The  moods 
and  emotions  of  altruistic  love  are  incompatible 
with  the  coarser  and  more  selfish  exhilarations 
of  drink.  The  true  lover  foregoes  even  his 
ounce-a-day.  This  high  enthusiasm  of  a  new- 
found love  may  not  last  any  more  than  the 
slum-drunkard's  fiery  absorption  in  religion, 
but  even  though  it  pass  away  it  proves  the 
point  that  the  drink-interest  can  be  driven  out 
by  a  stronger  interest.  And  this  is  what  you 
must  give  your  alcohol-habited  man.  You 
must  give  him  some  stark  form  of  self-interest 
that  will  appeal  to  him  more  than  alcohol  does 
— an  interest  which  is  either  more  intense  or, 
on  the  other  hand,  more  extensive.  Men  have 
found  it  in  love,  in  religion;  men  have  found 
it  in  socialism;  one  man  finds  it  in  pugilism 
and  another  in  politics;  but  until  he  has  found 


146  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

it  there  is  only  absurdity  in  supposing  that  he 
will  give  up  the  one  satisfying  interest  he  finds 
in  a  life  which  is  otherwise  dull  and  flat- 
leveled. 

Drunkard  and  moderate  drinker  alike,  you 
have  got  to  give  them  a  new  interest  in  life 
or  you  cannot  expect  them  to  desert  the  old 
one.  It  must  be  given  to  them.  For  centered 
in  a  selfishness,  which  increases  in  steady  pro- 
gression, they  cannot  reach  out  themselves  and 
get  it.  Sometimes,  you  say?  There  have  been 
instances,  of  course,  where  men  exerted  the 
Will-to-be-Sober  and  became  sober;  but  in 
almost  every  case  you  will  find  the  impulse 
came  from  without.  Love  went  by  in  the 
street  and  called  to  them;  or  ambition  knocked 
loudly  at  the  door;  and  the  dull  senses  heard 
and  woke.  And  you,  if  you  would  win  a 
man  from  drink,  must  first  find  the  one  interest 
compelling  enough  to  tempt  him  from  his 
monomania.  Only  through  an  intimate  knowl- 
edge of  his  character — or  his  type  of  character 
— can  you  succeed,  just  as  only  the  ''  qualified 
medical  man,"  who  has  made  a  study  of  his 
physical  body,  can  decide  upon  the  suitable 
medical  treatment.     The  problem  is  personal 


THERAPEUTICS  147 

to  each  man.  The  way  back  to  sobriety  is  not 
a  beaten  highway;  it  is  made  up  of  infinite 
bypaths. 

Some  years  ago  a  fantastically  named  '^  cure  " 
for  the  drink  habit  was  widely  advertised.  It 
originated  in  a  dreary  little  town  in  the  Mid- 
dle West.  And  thither  were  drawn  many  pa- 
thetic victims  of  alcohol.  The  story  of  one 
of  them  was  as  tragic  as  the  dark  undoing 
of  Edgar  Allan  Poe.  Old  New  Yorkers  will 
remember  him,  for  as  ''  Felix  Oldboy "  he 
wrote,  in  many  a  lovable  page,  the  story  of 
that  old  New  York  which  has  long  been  a 
part  of  the  romantic  past.  He  had  been  a 
soldier — colonel,  I  think,  in  the  United  States 
Army.  Withal  he  was  a  gentle,  scholarly  man, 
a  writer  of  charm  and  distinction.  And  for 
twenty  years  he  was  an  inebriate — a  dipsoma- 
niac, swept  every  now  and  then  into  dark 
abysses  of  drunkenness.  He  drew  frightful 
prose-pictures  of  that  descent — down-going  into 
a  gulf  comparable  to  the  depths  of  the  sea,  into 
the  "  habitation  of  the  monsters  of  silence." 
He  heard  of  this  new  ^^  cure  "  and  determined 
to  try  it,  as  he  had  tried  so  many  others  of 
the  kind.     In  him  the  Will-to-be-Sober  never 


148  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

wholly  died.  And  he  went,  a  thousand  miles 
from  home,  to  the  dingy  little  prairie  village. 
There  he  found  hundreds  of  others,  men  like 
himself,  haunted  by  hope  of  liberation — "  My 
comrades  were  lawyers,  physicians,  editors, 
merchants,  three  judges,  the  attorney-general 
of  a  Western  state,  an  ex-congressman  and  an 
assorted  lot  of  state  senators."  In  due  time 
he  returned  to  New  York  "  cured."  In  the 
North  American  Review  he  proclaimed  his 
victory  over  drink  and  signed  it  with  his  name, 
John  Flavel  Mines,  LL.D.  It  was  a  paean  of 
joy;  it  was  a  hymn  of  regeneration;  and  it  was 
the  most  pathetically  tragic  page  ever  penned 
by  a  hope-haunted  man.  The  article  was  still 
new  from  the  press,  was  still  making  its  sensa- 
tional way  over  the  land,  when  the  end  came. 
One  night  the  police  picked  a  drunkard  out 
of  the  gutter  of  a  New  York  street — a  thing 
plunged  in  mud  and  coma.  They  picked  it 
up  and  carted  it  away.  It  was  all  that  was  left 
of  John  Flavel  Mines,  LL.D.  He  died  the 
next  day  in  a  public  hospital.  He  had  made 
the  last  fight  of  his  Will-to-be-Sober;  he  had 
buried  his  dream  in  the  gutter. 

This  fragment  of  history  has  a  meaning.     It 


THERAPEUTICS  149 

is  pertinent  to  what  I  have  tried  to  state  in 
this  chapter.  In  this  ^'  cure  "  there  was  one 
of  the  elements  upon  which  I  have  laid  em- 
phasis. You  may  call  it  the  physiology  of 
change — its  psychology,  if  you  will.  There 
was  the  journey  of  a  thousand  miles,  the  change 
from  high  activities  of  his  life  in  New  York 
to  the  shabby  quiet  of  the  prairie  village;  there 
were  the  new  companions,  "  lawyers,  physi- 
cians, editors,  three  judges  and  the  ex-con- 
gressman"; above  all,  there  was  the  new 
interest — the  hope  born  of  the  very  mystery 
in  which  the  weird  alchemy  of  the  cure  was 
enwrapped.  Here  was  change — itself  a  mighty 
alchemist;  here  was  the  new  compelling  in- 
terest which  rode  down  the  monomania  of 
drink. 

What  was  lacking  was  the  second  element 
of  the  cure — the  special  medicinal  treatment 
which  only  the  qualified  medical  man,  know- 
ing the  patient  as  an  airman  knows  his  motor, 
could  prescribe.  For  it  was  the  physical  man 
who  was  ill.  Assume,  if  you  will,  that  the 
obsession  had  been  driven  out  of  the  house; 
still  was  the  house  a  battered  and  tottering  thing 
— the  doors  on  broken  hinges,  swinging  to  any 


I50  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

dark  psychosis  (of  drink  or  madness)  that 
cared   to  shoulder  its  way  in. 

The  case  of  that  poor,  dead  man  of  alcohol 
is  an  exceptional  one;  but  in  it  are  the  gen- 
eral and  essential  facts  which  have  to  do 
with  all  attempts  to  cure  a  drunkard.  And 
in  a  lesser  degree  they  are  applicable  to  the 
moderate  drinker,  as  he  is  called.  The  drink 
must  be  got  out  of  the  man  and  a  moral  tone 
got  into  the  man;  but  all  this  will  lead  no 
whither  at  all,  unless  the  poisoned  body  be 
set  right. 

And  the  conclusion  is  plain: 

Drunkard  or  light-tippling  man,  he  can  be 
brought  back  to  the  sober  way  of  life  if  there 
can  be  wakened  in  him  the  Will-to-be-Sober. 
And  then  a  new  interest  driving  out  the  old 
will  serve  to  hold  him  to  his  purpose;  new 
activities  will  help  to  transform  his  desires; 
but  all  this  is  a  mere  beginning.  Only  the 
qualified  physician,  who  knows  the  etiology 
of  the  case  and  the  physical  peculiarities  of 
the  man,  can  complete  and  affirm  the  cure. 

And  I  would  point  out  one  thing; 

Just  as  alcoholic  poisoning  begins  at  the 
top,  paralyzing  first  what  is  best  and  finest  in 


THERAPEUTICS  151 

man,  so  must  the  cure  there  begin.  The  weak 
and  heedless  will  must  be  wakened — the  atten- 
tion directed  to  higher  interests — and  then  there 
must  be  made  for  this  regenerated  Ego  a  clean 
and  safe  physical  home.  Of  course  in  cases  of 
darker  degradation  and  disease  the  treatment 
must  be  reversed  and  the  bodily  tenement 
cleaned  out  first  in  the  uncertain  hope  that 
a  decent  guest  may  take  possession  of  it.  These 
are  the  cases  that  demand  external  control — 
since  will  is  dead;  and  they  belong  to  the 
penological  part  of  the  subject.  What  is  true 
here  is  this:  The  man  in  whom  the  Will-to-be- 
Sober  still  lives  and  asserts  itself  (be  he  in- 
ebriate or  a  cleanlier,  clubbable,  socially- 
possible  alcoholic)  can  go  back  to  the  sober 
way  of  life — even  though  he  limp  a  bit,  in 
token  of  his  adventures,  to  the  end  of  his  days. 
A  thing  worth  knowing. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

CRIME,  DRINK-STORMS  AND 
DEGENERATION 


What  alcohol  does  to  the  individual  you  have 
seen — the  picture  is  a  gloomy  one. 

There  is,  as  you  know,  a  tragic  side  to  the 
law  of  evolution ;  for,  while  it  works  for  the 
type  and  not  for  the  mass,  for  the  individual 
and  not  the  collectivity,  yet  it  has  chained 
the  two,  indissolubly,  together.  The  indi- 
vidual is  required,  ^^  under  pain  of  being 
stunted  and  enfeebled  in  his  own  development," 
to  carry  others  along  with  him  in  his  evolu- 
tionary progress.  In  other  words,  your  good  is 
conditioned  in  the  good  of  all.  Of  course  it 
is  a  law  of  life  that  the  strongest  shall  sur- 
vive; but  here  is  the  point — step  by  step  with 
the  evolution  of  the  organism  (man)  there 
must  go  on  an  evolution  of  environment.  Civ- 
ilization   (a  pretty  word)    is  merely  the  pro- 

152 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION     153 

gressive  modification  of  social  conditions  so 
that  the  weak  may  survive  and  grow  out  of 
their  weakness.  You  may  prefer  to  de.Qne 
civilization  in  other  terms  and  phrases;  bur 
you  cannot  get  away  from  the  essential  fact 
that  it  is  an  evolution  of  environment,  always 
coincident  with  human   evolution. 

And  what,  then,  does  alcohol  do  to  the  state  ^ 

I  shall  try  and  put  the  case  for  the  United 
States  in  a  critically  just-minded  way,  without 
color  and  (as  the  lawyers  say)  without  coven. 

The  statistical  abstract  of  the  United  States 
for   1913   has  some  staggering  figures. 

For  instance  the  annual  drink-bill  of  the 
United  States  amounts  to  $2,336,662,338.00. 

Of  course  that  is  a  meaningless  progression 
of  numerals.  One  cannot  open  one's  mind  to 
them.  A  more  understandable  statement  is 
that  the  city  of  New  York  spends  one  million 
dollars  a  day  for  drink— precisely  three  hun- 
dred and  sixty-five  million  dollars  in  the  year 
1913.  Back  in  1870,  with  a  more  largely  na- 
tive population,  the  consumption  of  liquors  was 
just  under  eight  gallons  "  per  head  " — the  re- 
port states;  to-day  it  has  risen  to  over  twenty- 
two   gallons   for   every   individual   counted    in 


154  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

the  census.  This  is  an  enormous  fact,  not  easily 
realized.  The  statistical  mind  tries  to  think 
of  it  as  a  flood  of  intoxicants,  filling  a  chan- 
nel in  which  the  American  navy — and  mer- 
chant marine — could  float  in  easeful  roominess. 
A  grimmer  way  to  read  the  lesson  is  in  terms 
of  crime,  insanity,  vice.  That  million  a  day 
New  York  City  spends  on  drink  is  the  lesser 
expense.  She  pays  more  than  that  to  foot  the 
bills  for  damage  done. 

Crime  and  drink  are  almost  one  and  the 
same   thing;   almost. 

When  a  Lord  Chief  Justice  of  England  said: 
"  If  sifted,  nine-tenths  of  the  crime  of  Eng- 
land and  Wales  could  be  traced  to  drink," 
the  statement  had  a  repellent  air — as  though 
it  were  born  of  the  uncritical  fervor  of  a  popu- 
lar orator.  I  put  it  by.  But  in  this  country 
the  facts,  carefully  collated,  come  within  meas- 
urable distance  of  his  statement.  The  famous 
investigation  made  by  the  Massachusetts  Bu- 
reau of  Labor  Statistics  showed  that  eighty- 
four  per  cent,  of  all  the  criminals  under  convic- 
tion in  that  state  were  drink-made  criminals. 
Almost  nine-tenths,  as  you  see.  Were  Massa- 
chusetts   not    boozily    organized,    nine-tenths, 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION     155 

almost,  of  her  prisoned  criminals  would  be 
free  men,  innocent  of  crime,  fit  for  the  service 
of  the  state.  It  is  not  merely  that  the  so- 
cial customs  of  Massachusetts  make  for  drink 
— and  crime;  she  is  knowingly  and  willfully 
making  criminals  in  her  state-licensed  insti- 
tutions, which  she  euphemistically  calls  sa- 
loons, cafes  and  public-houses.  In  return  she 
gets  a  certain  number  of  dollars  and  a  defi- 
nite amount  of  crime,  which  ranges  from  theft 
to  murder. 

And  you  do  not  need  to  take  only  the  sta- 
tistics of  that  Eastern  commonwealth.  Every 
state  tells  the  same  story.  Every  commu- 
nity— every  social  class — bears  confirmation. 
Crime  is  the  progeny  of  drink — nine-tenths 
of  it,  almost.  I  take  the  word  of  a  man  who 
is  an  authority.  His  way  of  life  has  been  such 
that  he  knows  well  one  definite  class  of  men — 
the  United  States  Army.  And  he  says  that 
practically  ^'  all  the  crime  committed  in  the 
armiy,  directly  or  indirectly,  can  be  traced  to 
alcohol."  That  man  is  Colonel  L.  Mervin 
Maus,  who  has  just  retired  after  forty-one  years' 
service  in  the  medical  corps.  He  is  the  man 
who    organized    the    public-health    service    in 


156  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

the  Philippines  and  cleaned  Manila  of  bu- 
bonic plague,  leprosy  and  smallpox — of  most 
bad  pests  save  that  of  drink.  If  any  man  be 
an  authority  he  is  an  authority.  A  nation's 
crime  is  in  exact  proportion,  he  says,  to  its 
consumption  of  alcohol.  You  cannot  get  away 
from  it;  crime  is  imbedded  in  alcohol,  like  a 
triangle  in   a  circle. 

"  During  the  past  year  there  were  about 
2,000,000,000  gallons  of  wine,  beer,  whisky, 
brandy,  gin  and  other  alcoholic  drinks  con- 
sumed in  the  United  States,  which  cost  the 
people  as  many  dollars.  The  expenditure  of 
this  vast  sum  of  money  is  not  only  materially 
responsible  for  the  misery,  poverty,  robberies, 
murders  and  crimes  of  our  people,  but  for  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  deaths  and  the  large 
army  of  ^  intellectually  dead,'  who  are  to  be 
found  in  our  insane  asylums,  feeble-minded  and 
epileptic  institutions. 

"  Recent  studies  of  the  vital  statistics  of 
the  country  have  revealed  an  alarming  increase 
in  the  diseases  of  degeneracy,  and  it  has  be- 
come necessary  to  take  an  inventory  of  the 
moral  and  physical  stock  of  the  people.  This 
condition  is  principally  due  to  intemperance, 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    157 

immorality  and  vice  diseases,  and  unless  there 
be  a  general  reformation  in  the  moral  con- 
science and  habits  of  the  people  our  great  re- 
public, like  ancient  Babylon,  Nineveh,  Greece 
and  Rome,  will  in  turn  wither  and  die. 

"From  a  careful  study  of  the  statistics  of 
the  country,  it  is  believed  that  America  is  in- 
flicted with  nearly  a  million  degenerates  and 
criminals  at  a  cost  of  at  least  $250,000,000 
annually. 

"Among  these  unfortunates  we  find: 


Insane    200,000 

Feeble-minded    ; 250,000 

Deaf  and  dumb   100,000 

Blind     100,000 

Juvenile  delinquents  in  institutions . . .  50,000 

Paupers     100,000 

Prisoners  and  criminals    150,000 

"Which  gives  a  grand  total  of 950,000" 

Thus  Colonel  Maus,  writing  in  the  Medical 
Record;  and  for  this  widespread  racial  de- 
generation he  holds  responsible  alcohol — "  our 
racial  poison."  And  out  of  this  degeneration 
comes  crime,  as  pus  comes  from  a  sore. 


158  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

I  admit  that  statistics  are  dreary  things. 
They  never  seem  to  be  alive  and  talking  to 
one;  the  numerals  file  by  like  mutes  at  a 
funeral.  But  this  army  of  one  million  drink- 
begotten  criminals  and  degenerates  is  impres- 
sive. Only  fourteen  per  cent,  of  them,  re- 
member, are  plain  criminals — men  and  women 
of  whom  it  may  be  said  that  crime  delights 
'em;  crime-delighting  men,  who  bag  their 
trousers  at  the  knee  praying  for  more  crime; 
only  fourteen  per  cent.;  the  others  were 
draughted  into  the  army  of  crime  and  degen- 
eracy by  drink. 

"But  I,  thank  Heaven!  can  drink  and  be 
sober,"  you  persist  in  saying;  "just  as  I  can 
drink  and  be  honest." 

And  I  admit  that  you  do  not  belong  to  this 
wastage  and  refuse  of  our  boozily  organized 
society.  You  are  a  decent  man  fain  to  live  in 
a  decent  state,  but  you  cannot  get  that  decent 
state  in  which  you  fain  would  live  so  long 
as  the  drink-bred  million  prowls  in  the  mews 
and  alleys  or  squats  on  your  doorstep.  The 
individual  is  linked  to  the  mass;  and  you  are 
tied  to  the  million.  (The  rotten  bees  foul 
the    whole    hive.)      Why    should    you    laugh 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    159 

lightly  at  the  suggestion  that  you — and  yours 
— may  be  swept  away  into  that  criminal  per- 
centage of  the  victims  of  alcohol?  Of  course 
the  odds  against  it  are  heavy — from  a  statis- 
tical viewpoint.  And  you  can  take  the  long 
chance,  because  your  special  environment  is 
not  one  that  fosters  crime.  Your  instincts  are 
anti-criminal.  (Even  as  a  boy  you  never 
robbed  an  orchard  or  threw  stones  at  the  par- 
son's cat.)  And  so,  though  alcohol  may  hob- 
nail your  liver,  it  cannot  put  the  leg-irons  on 
you  and  lock  on  you  the  door  of  a  cell.  Prob- 
ably you  are  right.  Like  most  moderate  drink- 
ers you  will  probably  die  before  degeneration 
has  had  its  way  with  you;  and  your  poisoned 
progeny  will  put  up  a  tombstone  over  you, 
on  which  the  uncynical  may  read:  ''He  Has 
Stopped  Drinking/'  But  alcohol  is  a  curious 
thing.  It  is,  often,  as  lawless  in  its  mani- 
festations as  electricity.  Its  ordinary  way  of 
work  is  to  degenerate  its  man,  making  for  gen- 
eral mental  and  organic  degeneracy,  with  pro- 
gressive waning  of  the  intellectual  faculties. 
Now  and  then  it  has  another  way.  Instead  of 
slowly  undermining  its  man,  it  attacks  him 
furiously  at  intervals.     Now  and  then;  at  an 


i6o  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

unforeseen  moment,  out  of  the  blue,  a  drink- 
storm  beats  upon  him  and  sweeps  him  away 
from  his  moral  moorings.  (You  know  all 
about  that  dipsomaniacal  person;  usually  he 
is  the  man  of  finer  brain  and  more  delicately 
adjusted  intellect.)  The  best  man,  who  drinks, 
is  never  sure  that  crime  may  not  get  him ;  that, 
when  his  moral  discrimination  is  put  to  sleep 
by  the  drug,  a  strange  new  criminality  may 
not  start  up  in  him. 

The  chance  is  one  in  a  hundred? 

If  it  be  only  one  in  a  thousand,  it  is  a 
bad  chance  to  take  and  it  is  on  the  edge  of 
this  peril  that  one  finds  the  most  awful  and 
the  most  sad  tragedies  of  life.  One  such  ad- 
venture in  life  haunts  me.  It  has  haunted 
me  for  many  years;  and  will,  I  dare  say,  so 
long  as  I  remember  my  life  on  this  planet. 
So  I  might  as  well  put  it  down  in  this  book. 

Youth's  friendship  for  youth  is  very  beau- 
tiful. 

The  youth  I  loved  most  was  an  undergradu- 
ate at  one  of  the  English  universities.  Des- 
tiny had  given  him  birth  in  a  famous  English 
family — near  the  head  of  it.  He  was  a  tall, 
slight  boy,  with  the  dreamy  blue  eyes  of  the 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    i6i 

mystic.  I  remember  his  long,  white  hands 
and  a  way  he  had  of  ruffling  his  grouse-colored 
hair.  He  was  to  be  a  statesman;  it  was  a  tradi- 
tion in  his  family;  and  as  we  walked  the  road 
— ^'  at  Trompington,  not  far  from  Cantebrigge, 
there  goeth  a  streme  and  over  it  a  brigge  " — he 
built  his  dream.  What  a  dream  of  world's 
work  it  was!  And  what  a  Utopia  he  was  to 
establish  in  the  fair  land  where  Sir  Thomas 
More  built  up  that  earlier  dream!  Withal  he 
took  life  on  its  hedonistic  side.  Once,  I  re- 
member, we  had  wandered  far  afield,  debating 
the  old  Utopian  book,  and  a  winter  night  shut 
down  on  us.  We  went  into  a  little  wayside 
inn  for  dinner;  and  took  what  we  could  get. 
It  was  an  ale-house  and  there  was  no  wine  to 
be  had.  And  I  remember  his  pathetic  ex- 
clamation: 

^'  How  can  a  gentleman  dine  without  a  half- 
pint  of  claret?  " 

Now  in  the  horoscope  of  this  grave  and  gen- 
tle lad  there  was  the  maddest  night  ever  writ- 
ten by  the  stars.  I  did  not  witness  it;  I  was 
not  even  in  England;  but  what  happened  I 
know  and  I  know  the  end.  He  had  been 
studying  hard,  and  late  in  the  afternoon  he 


1 62  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

rode  out  for  an  hour  or  so — those  were  the 
days  when  youth  took  its  pleasure  on  a  horse; 
and  he  came  back  and  dressed  to  dine  in  town 
with  some  friends.  There  you  have  him  at  a 
trifle  before  eight  o'clock.  He  had  never 
been  drunk  in  his  life;  he  was  the  half-pint-of- 
claret  sort  of  man;  the  man  who  wets  his  pipe 
with  a  glass  or  two  of  whisky-and-soda;  a 
clean-mannered  man  who  had  as  soon  think  of 
drinking  to  excess  as  of  rolling  in  the  kennel 
like  a  dog.  Where  he  went  that  evening  I 
do  not  know.  The  bolt  from  the  blue  struck 
him.  At  ten  o'clock  he  was  a  drink-mad 
maniac,  scouring  the  streets  of  the  town,  with 
an  American  revolver  (Heaven  knows  where 
he  got  it;  I  have  forgotten)  in  his  hand;  and 
five  minutes  later  he  shot  and  killed  a  con- 
stable who  expostulated  with  him  in  the  kindly 
British  way.  They  hanged  that  boy.  In  spite 
of  the  mighty  weight  of  his  family  name,  in 
spite  of  his  dazed  defense,  in  spite  of  the 
evident  madness  of  that  drink-storm,  they 
hanged  him  on  a  gallows.  I  have  no  quarrel 
with  the  stern  equity  of  English  law;  but  on 
a  higher  gallows  I  had  hanged  the  man  who 
sold  the  poison  that  maddened  him. 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION     163 

^'  I  don't  remember  anything  about  it,"  was 
all  he  could  say.  How  could  he?  Science  to- 
day would  have  made  clear  that  he  was  in 
an  alcoholic  trance.  When  he  went  out  to  kill, 
the  real  man  in  him — the  man  I  knew  and 
loved,  the  dreamer  of  Utopia — was  dead  and 
blind.  I  do  not  care  to  write  any  more  about 
this  boy's  life  and  death;  only  this:  No  man, 
who  plays  with  the  lawless  forces  of  alcohol, 
knows  where  or  when  the  bolt  from  the  blue 
may  strike.  No  man  knows.  For  inexorably 
as  a  triangle  is  imbedded  in  a  circle,  there  is 
hidden  in  alcohol  the  swift  potentiality  of 
crime.  At  just  what  period  of  super-saturation 
it  will  flash  out  neither  your  physiologist 
nor  your  psychologist  can  tell.  (Wherefore 
drink,  dear  man,  and  be  sober,  and  bide  your 
time.) 

I  knew  another  man — 

You  may  be  aware  that  the  medical  men 
have  studied  with  extreme  attention,  in  recent 
years,  what  they  call  the  periodicity  of  the 
drink  neurosis.  It  is  another  way  of  talking 
about  the  bolt  from  the  blue.  There  is,  for 
example,  the  drink  neurotic  who  abstains  for 
distinct  periods  and  then  suddenly  breaks  out 


1 64  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

into  drunkenness,  which  science  can  but  attrib- 
ute to  unknown  (as  yet)  cyclic  degenerations. 
And  one  of  the  alienists  says: 

"  To  the  unreasoning  public  and  the  fool- 
ish theorist  this  is  simply  vice — an  outbreak 
of  the  animal  instincts  and  the  beast  part  of 
the  man.  The  most  delusive  and  stupid 
theories  have  begot  a  great  literature  in  ex- 
planation of  these  two  widely  differing  con- 
ditions. The  statement  that  it  is  simply  a 
gathering  and  breaking  of  morbid  energies  and 
activities  of  the  brain  and  nervous  functions, 
governed  by  distinct  physical  laws,  is  not  recog- 
nized to  any  great  extent." 

Had  it  been  recognized — this  scientific  fact 
— many  a  man  who  has  gone  to  the  gallows 
had  gone,  more  justly,  to  an  asylum  for  the 
insane;  and  science  must  find  a  solution  for 
the  perplexing  and  menacing  problem  of  those 
crimes  for  which  alcohol,  and  not  the  man, 
is  responsible. 

II 

I  knew  another  man  who  was  hanged. 
(I  would  not  have  you  think  that  an  undue 
number  of  my  acquaintances  have  gone  that  way. 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    165 

There  were  only  these  two;  though  when  I 
think  of  some  of  the  men  I  have  known  I  won- 
der how  they  escaped  it.)  I  cannot  tell  you 
this  man's  name.  He  was  a  man  of  breeding 
and  scholarly  culture;  and  all  this  was  evident 
when  I  saw  him,  first,  in  the  filth  and  darkness 
of  a  jail.  It  was  in  a  dreary  town  of  West 
Virginia,  whither  I  had  gone  to  see  him 
hanged.  The  town  comes  back  to  my  memory. 
It  was  a  town  a  hundred  years  old — perhaps 
more;  it  was  a  town  of  twenty  thousand  in- 
habitants— perhaps  more;  and  in  it  there  had 
never  been  anyone  who  was  not  just  like 
everyone  else;  not  a  hero  in  the  past,  not  an 
artist,  not  a  man  so  slightly  distinguished  he 
was  worth  emulating  or  envying;  a  town  as  un- 
distinguished as  a  clay  road.  Collarless  citi- 
zens, in  slouch  hats  and  frock  coats  and  black 
trousers  and  muddy  boots,  lounged  in  the 
streets  and  spat  tobacco  juice  at  each  other. 
The  women  seemed  to  spend  most  of  their  time 
pulling  their  stockings  up.  And  I  came  to  the 
jail  and  found  my  man  in  the  cell.  He  had 
been  convicted  of  murder  and  was  to  be  hanged 
in  four  days.  Facile  journalism  had  dubbed 
him,  "  The  Man  of  Mystery,''  for  he  had  re- 


1 66  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

fused  to  give  his  name  and  had  been  tried 
as  John  Doe.  He  had  answered  no  questions. 
He  had  made  no  plea.  Sullenly  he  had  let 
them  sentence  him  to  death  without  a  word. 
The  sheriff,  sprinkling  me  with  tobacco-juice 
the  while,  had  told  me  the  story  of  the  crime. 
A  tramp  in  rags,  the-man-to-be-hanged,  had 
come  into  town  begging  for  food.  He  was 
an  amusing  tramp  from  the  viewpoint  of  these 
slouch-hatted  West  Virginians;  in  the  first 
place,  he  was  English  and  his  pronunciation 
of  the  language,  differing  from  that  of  West 
Virginia,  was  screamingly  absurd;  moreover, 
round  his  ankles  were  buttoned  ragged  spats 
— dirty  insignia  of  fallen  gentility.  Where- 
upon the  tavern-wags  had  sport  with  him; 
and  filled  his  empty  belly  with  the  kind  of 
whisky  drunk  in  those  parts.  Then  they 
kicked  the  gentleman  in  dirt  and  rags  out  of 
their  town — which  was  equally  distinguished 
both  for  dirt  and  rags.  A  few  hours  later 
they  found  him  in  a  drunken  sleep  by  the 
railway  tracks.  And  thirty  yards  away,  at  the 
door  of  his  shanty,  lay  murdered  the  old  man 
whose  duty  it  had  been  to  watch  the  cross- 
ing— or  switch  the  trains — at  that  point.     So 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    167 

they  tried  the  tramp  (always  sullen  and  silent) 
for  the  murder  and  ordered  him  hanged;  and 
from  forty  miles  about  the  interested  natives 
were  swarming  in  over  the  muddy  roads  to  be 
on  hand  for  the  festival. 

He  was  crouched  in  the  back  of  his  dirty 
cell.  I  think  what  brought  him  forward  to 
the  bars  in  the  door  was  the  fact  that  I  did 
not  speak  to  him  in  West  Virginian — a  lan- 
guage he  had  taken  a  dislike  to,  it  would 
seem.  After  a  while  the  man  who  had  been 
dumb  so  long  spoke.  Before  the  day  was 
done  he  told  me  all  he  was  ever  to  tell  on  this 
earth.  There  wasn't  much  in  the  story — ex- 
cept that  bolt  from  the  blue.  What  had  hap- 
pened to  him  was  due  to  two  things:  First, 
he  had  come  into  two  thousand  pounds — a  sum 
of  no  importance  in  itself,  but  full  of  possi- 
bilities when  one  is  young;  and,  second,  cer- 
tain real-estate  speculators  in  the  Southern 
States  were  printing  glowing  advertisements 
in  the  English  newspapers — and  he  read  and 
believed.  He  brought  his  money  to  the  "  New 
South,"  with  the  pleasant  hope  of  building  a 
home  and  making  a  career.  It  took  the  sharp- 
ers of  that  part  of  the  world  exactly  six  months 


1 68  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

to  get  his  money  away  from  him.  He  was 
ashamed  to  write  home.  A  few  months  more — 
living  on  his  rings  and  watch  and  clothes — 
and  he  was  in  the  street.  And  he  set  out  to 
tramp  to  the  seashore,  or  some  port  where  he 
might  find  a  ship  he  could  work  his  way  home 
in.  By  what  devious  routes  I  know  not  he 
wandered  into  West  Virginia.  It  was  after- 
noon by  the  time  he  had  told  me  this  much 
of  the  story.  My  influence  with  the  sheriff 
had  grown  during  the  day  and  now  the  cell 
door  was  open  and  the  murderer  and  I  were 
sitting  together  in  the  cell  on  the  bench  that 
served  him  for  a  bed;  and  smoking. 

"  Tell  me  about  the  tavern-wags,"  I 
said;  and  he  told  me  about  the  tavern- 
wags. 

^'  After  that,'^  said  he,  '^  I  remember  noth- 
ing— nothing  at  all — until  I  woke  in  a  cell. 
I  think  someone  kicked  me  in  the  face  and  I 
woke." 

"Did  you  kill  the  old  man?" 

"  God  knows,"  he  said,  and  took  his  hairy 
head  in  his  hands,  "  I  do  not  know.  You 
see,  I  used  to  be  a  gentleman  and  I  was  never 
drunk  before — I  do  not  know."     He  kept  re- 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    169 

peating  that  the  horror  of  it  was  that  he  did 
not  know. 

Drink  neurosis;  alcoholic  trance;  the  bolt 
from  the  blue — call  it  what  you  will.  It  is 
quite  true;  he  did  not  know;  in  this  world  he 
never  was  to  know;  drink  and  the  tavern-wags 
had  plunged  him  into  a  cloud  of  nescience, 
and  who  was  to  say  that  murder  had  not  hap- 
pened in  the  cloud? 

I  wanted  to  do  something;  I  wanted  him  to 
give  me  his  name  that  I  might  telegraph  to 
his  ambassador;  I  wanted  to  get  a  lawyer  and 
try  for  appeal;  and  his  answer  was:  ^' What 
could  I  do  with  life  now?  Death  is  kinder 
than  a  cell  for  life."  He  would  have  nothing 
done.  John  Doe  was  name  enough  to  be 
hanged  in.    One  thing  he  said  at  last. 

'^  There  is  one  favor  you  can  do  me,"  he 
said. 

^^ril   do  it,  John  Doe." 

"  You  see,  I  don't  mind  asking  you — ^you 
are  the  only  man  of  my  class  I've  met 
since " 

He  was  not  a  snob  and  I  was  not  a  snob; 
he  meant  that  we  belonged  to  the  bathing  class. 
His   request  was   that  I   should   persuade   the 


I70  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

sheriff  to  let  him  have  a  bath.  I  got  it  for 
him,  though  the  sheriff  laughed  like  a  loon — 
to  him  the  bath  habit  was  as  ridiculous  as  the 
spat-wearing  habit.  And  I  had  a  barber  sent 
in  who  cut  his  tangled  hair  and  shaved  the  hair 
off  his  face — what  looked  out  at  me  was  a  pale, 
tragic-faced  boy  not  more  than  twenty-two 
years  old. 

I  said:  "Good-night,  I'll  come  as  early  as 
I  can  in  the  morning." 

He  stood  looking  at  his  rags. 

"  And  I'll  bring  you  some  clothes,"  I  added. 

He  laughed  briefly  in  a  sort  of  timid  way. 

"Have  you  got  a  suit  of  evening  clothes?" 
he  said  foolishly.  "  It  would  remind  me  of 
something.     Perhaps  you  will  understand." 

I  did  not  have  evening  clothes  with  me; 
in  those  days  one  did  not  take  that  sort  of 
thing  to  West  Virginia;  but  I  telegraphed  for 
them  and  they  came.  What  the  working  of 
his  mind  was  I  do  not  know;  I  do  not  know 
what  memory  of  another  hour  and  another 
place  was  in  his  mind;  but  that  winter  morn- 
ing he  stood  up  to  be  hanged  in  white  linen 
and  the  livery  society  has  ordained  for  even- 
ing.    A  few  hours  later  they  put  his  body, 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    171 

still  dressed  that  way,  in  a  pit  of  lime;  and 
slouch-hatted  men,  as  they  covered  it  up, 
spat  tobacco-juice  on   it. 

It  was  a  grey  morning,  I  remember,  without 
rain.  I  went  with  him  to  the  gallows;  and 
together  we  looked  out  over  the  throng  that 
filled  the  square — farmers  and  their  wives  and 
children  in  picnic-wagons,  negroes,  slouch- 
hatted  men  and  lean  women — stooping  to  pull 
up  their  stockings;  a  throng  and  a  mob.  It 
was  a  gallows  with  a  trap.  He  stood  erect 
while  they  tightened  the  fastenings  on  his 
legs.  He  threw  back  his  head  and  looked 
away  toward  the  East — over  the  mob,  beyond 
the  horizon,  to  the  sea  and  the  home  beyond 
the  sea.  And  from  his  mouth  there  came  a 
cry  so  strange  and  compelling  that  still  at 
night  I  hear  it  ringing  in  my  ears  and  wake 
with  a  start — a  wild  cry,  fierce  and  sudden 
as  trumpets: 

''  Good-by,  Nellie— Nellie— Nellie!  " 

Three  times;  and  in  some  far-away  English 
village  it  beat,  I  know,  upon  a  woman's  heart, 
and  struck  her  down. 

Then  the  trap  fell;  the  boyish  figure  in  its 
grotesque  livery  of  black  and  white  dropped 


172  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

out  of  sight  into  the  strangling  horror  of  death; 
and  underneath  the  scaffold  the  hangman 
clutched  the  dying  legs  and  hung  to  them  with 
all  his  weight  to  make  death  sure. 

A  bolt  from  the  blue ;  that's  the  way  it  struck 
one  man  I  knew.  His  name  was  John  Doe. 
Of  course  you,  being  Richard  Roe,  are  not 
John  Doe.  You  can  drink  and  be  sober,  and 
are  smilingly  incredulous  of  these  mythical 
bolts  from  the  blue. 

Well;  there  is  one  thing  worth  thinking 
over;  alcohol  has  two  ways  of  getting  its  man — 
by  increased  doses  and  by  the  progressive  poi- 
son effect  of  the  same  small  dose  regularly 
repeated ;  but  even  if  you  dodge  those  two  ways, 
no  man  can  say  he  is  safe  from  the  third  wild, 
lawless  and  crashing  way  that  strikes  the  brain 
into  sudden  confusion  and  makes  for  crime. 
Even  the  alienists  have  not  uncovered  that 
secret  of  alcohol;  and  who  are  you  to  boast  that 
you  are  immune?  Richard  Roe  is  not  a  whit 
safer  than  John  Doe — with  his  black  moment 
of  neuro-psychiatric  alcoholism. 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    173 

III 

Madame  Tarnowsky — who  is  an  honor  to 
Russia  and  to  the  wider  world  of  science — 
found,  in  her  study  of  "  Female  Offenders," 
that  eighty-two  per  cent,  of  sinning  women 
were  brought  to  vice  by  alcohol.  An  old  and 
dark  truth;  let  it  stand  here  without  com- 
ment. For  these  unhappy  victims  alcohol  is 
that  river  Bulicame  (in  truer  sense  than  Dante 
knew)  whose  waters  were  portioned  out  among 
the  sinful  women.  Were  it  not  for  alcohol 
eighty-two  women  out  of  every  hundred  of 
the  damned— would  have  pure  faces  and  sinless 
eyes.  That  was  the  madness  they  drank  of,  ere 
they  had  the  desperate  courage  to  sink  woman- 
hood in  vice.    A  fact  without  comment. 

You  have  read  this  book  to  little  purpose 
if  you  have  not  learned  that  the  certain  har- 
vest reaped  by  drink  is  insanity.  I  do  not 
wish  to  knock  you  about  the  ears  with  statis- 
tics; that  is  an  unattractive  way  of  driving 
the  truth  home;  but  let  me  put  it  as  an  axiom: 

In  the  United  States  the  proportion  of  in- 
sanity is  in  exact  keeping  with  the  consump- 
tion of  alcoholic  drink. 


174  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

The  ratio  is  unfailing. 

Take  New  York  State;  one  in  every  two 
hundred  and  ninety  of  the  population  is  insane. 
Behind  this  army  of  mad  men,  mad  women, 
mad  children  stand  the  thirty-five  thousand 
two  hundred  and  seventy-five  liquor  dealers. 
Look  to  the  West  and  the  Southwest;  there  in 
fifteen  states  there  are  only  twelve  thousand 
drink-vendors  and  in  these  states  the  insane  are 
in  the  ratio  of  one  to  every  eight  hundred 
and  eighty  of  the  population.  What  do  you 
think  of  the  contrast? 

The  last  census  of  the  United  States  shows 
that  the  institutional  cases  of  insanity  are  in 
almost  exact  proportion  to  the  amount  of  alco- 
holic consumption. 

New  York  with  a  population  of  9,113,000 
has  31,265  cases  of  insanity,  that  is  one  out  of 
every  two  hundred  and  ninety  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  the  state.  Then  look  at  droughty  Kansas ; 
you  may  not  like  to  look  at  Kansas,  but  in  this 
connection  a  study  of  Kansas  will  be'  for  the 
good  of  your  soul;  it  is,  as  you  know,  a  drink- 
less  state — to  a  certain,  unideal  extent;  and 
here  are  the  data: 

In  ninety-seven  out  of  one  hundred  and  five 


CRIME,  DRINK,  DEGENERATION    175 

counties  there  are  no  insane.  In  fifty-four  of 
these  counties  there  are  no  feeble-minded — non- 
alcoholic parentage  being  eugenic.  In  ninety- 
six  counties  there  were  no  inebriates — not 
one.  And  thirty-eight  county  poorhouses  were 
empty.  In  the  entire  state  there  are  less  than 
six  hundred  paupers.  The  jails  in  sixty-five 
counties  were  empty;  and  sixty-five  counties 
sent  up  not  one  prisoner,  convict  and  criminal, 
to   the   penitentiaries. 

The  relative  proportion  of  insanity  in  the 
various  states  is  in  exact  keeping  with  the  legis- 
lative policy  concerning  the  sale  of  intoxicants ; 
thus: 

Kansas i  to  873 

Indiana    i  to  609 

Maine    i  to  590 

New  Hampshire   i  to  473 

Ohio     I  to  449 

Illinois I   to  437 

Rhode    Island    i  to  436 

Michigan     i  to  419 

Wisconsin    i  to  376 

Virginia     i   to  375 

Connecticut     i  to  311 

New  York    i  to  290 


176  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

And  so  enough  of  statistics  if  this  truth  has 
been  driven  home:  insanity  is  the  mad  son 
of  alcohol.  Idiocy  is  its  driveling  daughter. 
Suicide  is  its  despairing  child.  (The  esti- 
mate is  that  seventy-eight  per  cent,  of  the  sui- 
cides are  due  to  alcohol.) 

Upon  my  word  that  man  who  called  drink 
a  racial  curse — even  he  who  called  it  a  pan- 
demic plague — spoke  without  exaggeration 
and  with  measurable  reserve. 

And  I  hear  a  voice  as  from  very  far  off; 
it  is  your  small  persistent  voice,  repeating: 
"  I  am  a  moderate  drinker;  I  can  drink,  thank 
Heaven!  and  be  sane."  Dear  man,  with  your 
ounce  or  two  a  day,  you  may  be  mentally  hale 
enough  to  keep  out  of  a  madhouse;  but  on 
the  higher  functional  levels  you  are  already 
mad — morally  you  are  as  mad  as  a  hatter. 


CHAPTER  IX 
DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES 


One  of  the  wisest  men  of  our  generation — ■ 
though  he  has  chosen  to  wear  the  cap  and  bells 
of  a  public  jester — is  Finley  Peter  Dunne. 
Following  the  bad  example  of  Thackeray — 
and  with  a  wit  as  keen  as  his — he  dresses  his 
wise,  far-seeing  philosophy  in  antic  and  gro- 
tesque spelling;  but  Mr.  Dooley's  philosophy 
is  always  a  transcendent  form  of  common  sense. 
Were  I  writing  a  social  history  of  the  United 
States  for  the  last  two  decades  I  should  go 
for  documentation  to  Mr,  Dooley;  from  him 
I  would  best  learn  what  has  been  the  nation's 
thought  on  all  the  great  national  questions, 
as  one  by  one  they  rose  above  the  horizon. 
Now  Mr.  Dooley  when  he  pondered  the 
war  problem  saw  that  the  fact  of  most 
startling  significance  was  that  the  nations  at 
war    had    placed    the    ban    on    drink.      And 

177 


178  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

in  that  bad  spelling  (which  annoys  me)  he 
said: 

"  It's  sthrange,  Hinnissy,  how  th'  wurruld 
has  turned  again  its  lifelong  roommate,  Jawn 
Barleycorn.  Afther  rollickin'  with  th'  old  fel- 
low f'r  cinchries  th'  fickle  public  has  rounded 
on  him  an'  is  rapidly  chasin'  him  off  th'  map. 
I've  told  ye  how  it  is  in  England.  It's  th' 
same  ivrywhere.  In  Rooshya  th'  polis  has 
stopped  th'  sale  iv  vodky,  which  is  th'  name 
iv  th'  Rooshyan  naytional  brainstorm.  In 
France  they've  f'rbid  th'  cityzin  to  take  his 
tumbler  iv  absinthe.  I  niver  tasted  th'  deleery- 
ous  dhrink  since  I  was  a  child  an'  we  got  it 
f r'm  Mother  Winslow,  but  it  was  in  great  favor 
in  France.  .  .  . 

"Jawn  Barleycorn  might  have  gone  on  f'r 
years  if  it  hadn't  been  that  th'  wurruld  begun 
to  suspect  that  he  was  no  good  in  a  fight.  That 
knocked  th'  last  leg  fr'm  undher  him.  I  cud've 
told  th'  wurruld  so  long  ago.  I've  seen  him 
start  a  millyon  fights,  but  niver  seen  him  win 
wan.  He's  lived  f'r  years  on  his  repytation 
as  a  warryor.  No  army  was  supposed  to  be 
anny  good  without  him.  He  was  welcome  in 
th'   sojers'   tent  an'   th'   gin'ral's   headquarters. 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    179 

People  said  about  him:  'He's  a  scamp  an'  a 
false  friend,  but  he's  a  divvle  in  a  scrap.'  An' 
now  they  know  he  aint  anny  good  at  that 
ayether.     His  bluff  has  been  called." 

And  that  is  truly  said.  The  first  enemy  the 
warring  nations  had  to  fight  was  drink.  They 
had  to  kill  that  enemy  before  they  could  go 
about  their  business  of  killing  each  other.  Men 
with  drink  in  them  cannot  even  fight.  That 
mouse  (of  the  anecdote)  was  not  really  a  match 
for  the  cat.  Drink  does  not  give  courage,  as 
you  have  seen;  all  it  does  is  to  destroy  the 
moral  nature  in  the  man.  Unless  I  said  a  word 
or  two  of  the  atrocities  committed  in  the  early 
weeks  of  the  war  the  black  record  of  drink 
were  incomplete.  The  way  of  the  Germans 
through  Belgium  and  Northern  France — above 
all,  through  the  tragic  province  of  Alsace — 
was  marked  by  rapine,  murder,  mutilation, 
looting  and  incendiarism.  There  need  be  no 
doubt  of  this;  there  can  be  no  denial;  I  know 
whereof  I  speak.  But  these  amiable,  beer- 
drinking,  song-loving  Germans,  you  say,  are 
not  fiends?  Man,  man,  they  were  drunk.  They 
looted  the  cellars  of  Louvain  before  they  set 
about  murdering  old  men,  mutilating  children, 


i8o  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

violating  women.  The  loot  of  the  wine-cellars 
of  Champagne  fired  the  maniacs  who  sowed 
destruction  in  Northern  France.  I  know  a  vil- 
lage in  Alsace.  With  pathetic  gayety  it  wel- 
comed the  French  liberators  when  they  entered 
the  province.  When  the  French  were  driven 
back  the  Germans  loosed  a  ^^  punitive  expedi- 
tion "  on  the  hapless  village,  with  orders  to 
punish  the  traitors.  And  they  punished  them. 
They  rode  into  the  village  square  and  (while 
the  terror-stricken  people  took  refuge  in  a 
church)  they  drank  their  fill  at  the  tavern. 
Then,  savage  with  drink,  they  fired  the  poor 
little  cottages  of  the  village.  At  the  door 
of  the  church  stood  the  old  priest.  He  said 
there  were  only  women  and  children  and  old 
men  in  the  church  and  he  begged  for  their 
lives.  And  the  war-drunkards  killed  him  where 
he  stood.  They  rushed  into  the  church  and 
drove  out  the  wretched  villagers — hounded 
them  through  the  burning  streets  and  out  into 
the  meadows;  murder,  mutilation,  violation, 
infamy  beyond  speech  were  the  toll  of  the  day. 
And  what  happened  there  happened  over  a 
twenty-mile  strip  of  territory.  Now  these 
''  punitive  expeditions  "  were  made  up  of  men 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    i8i 

— but  of  men  drunk  and  lust-maddened  by 
alcohol.  That  is  the  real  explanation  of  the 
atrocities.  Germany  had  never  been  able  to 
force  her  brave  soldiers  to  carry  out  the  "  pol- 
icy of  f rightfulness  "  unless  she  had  first  let 
them  lap  at  the  drink.  There  was  another 
side   to  it. 

I  saw  it  in  Alsace  and  Baden  when  the  Ger- 
man officers  and  soldiery  were  trying  to  handle 
the  fierce,  panic-stricken  crowds  that  swarmed, 
from  both  sides,  across  the  frontier.  These 
soldiers,  slashing  with  swords,  thrusting  with 
rifle-stocks,  screaming  contradictory  orders, 
were  plain  hysterics — hysterical  from  over- 
doses, or  from  interrupted  doses  of  alcohol. 
The  German  war  machine  had  been  driven 
more  swiftly  over  Brabant  and  Flanders  had 
it  been  driven  by  sober  men.  And  when  Ger- 
many realized  this  fact  she,  too,  put  the  ban 
on  drink  in  the  army.  What  happened  in 
Dinant  could  not  happen  in  any  town  seized 
to-day  by  German  troops.  What  happened 
in  Dinant?  It  was  typical  of  the  drunken  days 
of  the  war — those  first  four  weeks  or  so.  There 
was  no  more  picturesque  city  in  Europe — lying 
beneath    the    mighty,    church-crowned    bluffs, 


1 82  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

with  the  white  river  at  its  feet.  Beyond  the 
bridge  was  the  village  square.  Into  this  vil- 
lage square  the  Germans  drove  all  the  women 
and  girls.  On  the  terraces  of  the  taverns  sat 
the  officers,  drinking  and  looking  on.  The 
drunken  soldiers  were  loosed  on  the  women; 
each  seized  the  one  he  would;  and  for  hours 
they  hauled  them  about  in  a  mad  dance — until 
darkness  fell.  And  when  darkness  fell  there 
were  horrors  unspeakable  in  the  darkness. 
Then  at  dawn  the  drunkards  fired  Dinant  and 
marched  away. 

I  do  not  think  this  was  the  reason  Germany 
put  the  ban  on  drink  in  the  army;  it  was  be- 
cause she  discovered — with  Mr.  Dooley — that 
"  Jawn  Barleycorn  was  no  good  in  a  fight." 
After  those  first  crazed  weeks  she  fought  sober; 
with  what  dark  success  you  know. 

A  boozily  organized  army  cannot  fight;  a 
boozily  organized  nation  cannot  efficiently  pro- 
duce war  material  or  establish  an  efficient  trans- 
port service.  The  danger  of  drunkenness  in 
time  of  peace  becomes  in  time  of  war  a  mon- 
strous peril.  Every  soldier  realized  it;  every 
statesman  saw  it. 

But  what  was  to  be  done? 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    183 

For  generations  science,  religion,  statesman- 
ship had  fought  this  evil  thing;  they  had  pelted 
the  evil  thing  with  tracts  and  tied  it  up  in  red 
tape;  all  to  no  saving  purpose. 

But  when,  in  a  world  at  war,  the  need  of 
sobriety  was  imperative  it  did  not  take  the 
nations  long  to  find  a  way  of  killing  the  evil 
thing.  It  was  as  simple  and  practical  as  shut- 
ting ofif  an  electric  current.  It  prohibited  the 
manufacture  and  sale  of  the  fiercer  kinds  of 
drink.  (By  way  of  compromise  it  left,  to 
those  so  habituated  to  alcoholic  poison  they 
could  not  do  without  it,  the  less  harmful  solace 
of  beer  and  wine.)  Over  the  drunkenness  of 
the  soldiers  in  the  field  a  death  penalty  hung. 
As  for  the  peasant,  the  workingman,  the  citi- 
zen whose  duties  lay  behind  the  lines,  they 
were  kept  sober — by  the  prohibitive  fact  that 
they  could  not  buy  enough  alcohol  to  get 
drunk  on. 

France  was  first  in  this,  as  she  is  always 
first  in  the  noblest  missions  of  humanity;  she 
is  the  light-bearer.  France  was  first.  The  day 
after  war  was  ruthlessly  and  lawlessly  declared 
upon  her,  she  prohibited  the  sale  of  absinthe 
in  all  France.     This  was  a  mere  military  de- 


1 84  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

cree;  but  as  soon  as  the  French  parliament  met 
it  passed  a  law  prohibiting  forever  the  manu- 
facture, importation  and  sale  of  that  worst 
kind  of  alcoholic  drink. 

You  cannot  exaggerate  the  importance  of  the 
role  played  by  absinthe  in  the  drama  of  alco- 
holic degradation  in  France.  The  records  of 
one  institution  (Charenton,  I  think)  show  that 
out  of  nine  thousand  nine  hundred  and  thirty- 
two  cases  of  alcoholic  alienation  four  thousand 
eight  hundred  and  eighty-two,  or  approxi- 
mately half  of  the  entire  number,  were  caused 
by  absinthe.  The  serious  element  in  the  sta- 
tistics is  that  they  reveal  an  increase  (merely 
taking  ten  years)  of  fifty-seven  per  cent,  in 
the  number  of  insane  in  the  thirty-six  depart- 
ments of  France.  Long  ago  the  fight  on  this 
bad  kind  of  drink  began;  but  insurmountable 
obstacles  stood  in  the  way.  One  obstacle  was, 
of  course,  the  banded  forces  of  the  drink- 
makers  and  drink-vendors;  another  was  that 
absinthe  paid  a  revenue  of  hundreds  of  mil- 
lions of  francs  a  year  to  the  treasury — and  the 
ministers  of  finance  stood,  greed-centered, 
against  giving  up  this  spoil  of  drunkenness. 
Indeed,  in  every  country  state-finance  has  been 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    185 

the  rock  behind  which  the  poisoners  took  shel- 
ter. ^^  Without  the  liquor-tax  what  a  deficit 
there  will  be!"  War  gave  swift  answer  to 
that  cowardly  plea.  What  was  the  tax-gain 
from  liquor  when  dropped  into  the  war-deficit 
of  a  billion  a  month? 

War  gave  the  sudden  lesson  that  you 
cannot  measure  a  nation's  needs  in  terms  of 
money. 

Torn  away  from  petty  considerations  of 
greed,  the  state  was  forced  to  face  the  great 
question  of  the  conservation  of  the  race — the 
health  and  purity  of  its  people  on  which  the 
future  depends.  And  in  spite  of  distillers, 
drunkards  and  financiers  France  decreed  the 
great  reform — a  half  measure  to  be  sure,  but 
a  great  measure,  because  it  lays  down  the  prin- 
ciple of  state  prohibition. 

Then  the  voice  of  Russia — that  mystic  home 
of  sacrificial  brotherhood — was  heard.  By 
a  signal  ukase  the  Czar  shut  up  all  the  fac- 
tories where  vodka  was  made  and  all  the 
shops  where  it  was  sold.  This  was  his  own 
reformation — one  of  the  reforms  that  strange, 
little,  bearded  dreamer  has  been  able  to  bring 
to  pass  in  the  face  of  his  iron  "  advisers."    Let 


1 86  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

it  be  to  his  credit.  It  was  he,  and  no  other, 
who  prepared  the  way  for  this  great  step,  by 
taking  the  traffic  in  vodka  away  from  the  dirty 
retailers  who  passed  out  the  poison.  I  re- 
member Russia  as  it  was  in  those  days  before 
he  set  up  that  reform.  You  could  go  into 
any  village;  there  was  the  posting  station, 
joined  to  it  the  tavern.  And  that  tavern  was 
the  plague  spot  of  the  Mir.  There  the  peasants 
drank;  and  when  their  money  was  gone  they 
pawned  their  plows  and  carts,  their  tools  and 
their  clothes — pawned  their  unsown  crops  and 
mortgaged  all  they  owned.  The  drink-shops 
and  pawn-shops  were  one.  And  when  the  gov- 
ernment stepped  in  to  save  the  slaves  of  the 
pawn-ticket  and  the  bottle — when  the  tavern 
leeches  were  driven  out  and  went  wandering 
over  the  land  wailing  of  persecution — there 
was  the  beginning  of  a  new  day  in  Russia. 
The  government  took  over  the  sale  of  vodka — 
and  sold  it,  like  postage-stamps,  at  government 
depots.  It  could  be  got  only  in  bottles;  it 
could  not  be  drunk  on  the  premises;  and  it 
was  a  pure  liquor — without  base  adulterations; 
and  in  a  way  it  checked  drunkenness.  Of 
most  importance  was  the  fact  that  it  set  the 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    187 

whole  bad  business  in  one  hand,  so  that  when 
the  hour  struck  one  hand  could  throttle  it. 
For  years  that  has  been  the  dream  and  pur- 
pose of  the  Czar.  Against  him  were  the  liquor 
'^  interests  ";  against  him  was  the  official  pro- 
tector of  drunkenness,  the  Minister  of  Finance, 
who  argued  that  one-third  the  revenues  of  the 
state  came  from  vodka;  but  war  gave  the  pa- 
tient little  Czar  his  chance — and  he  struck. 
For  the  safety  of  the  state,  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  the  race,  he  struck  down  the  monstrous 
evil. 

War  is  sacrificial. 

It  demands  of  a  nation  the  supreme  sacrifice. 
At  such  a  time  a  nation  more  readily  yields 
the  lesser  sacrifice.  It  throws  into  the  melting- 
pot  not  only  its  jewels  and  fine  gold,  but  its 
vices  as  well. 

I  do  not  assert  (one  were  a  fool  to  assert) 
that  France  and  Russia  have  gone  abruptly  to 
sobriety.  A  generation,  drink-poisoned  from 
youth,  cannot  be  dragooned  into  clean  living. 
Drunkenness  has  not  vanished  from  Russia  nor 
France;  in  spite  of  tolerably  severe  laws  mur- 
der, forgery,  adultery,  false-coining  still  exist. 
But  this  is  true:  The  great  reform  has  been 


1 88  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

accomplished.  The  state  is  no  longer  an  ac- 
complice in  the  boozy  organization  of  society. 
The  official  drink  environment  that  bred  drunk- 
ards— as  a  swamp  breeds  malaria — has  been 
swept  away.  The  drunkard  is  no  longer  state- 
bred;  he  is  no  longer  a  necessary  creation  of  a 
poisoned  environment.  And  now,  definitely, 
he  belongs  to  the  penologist  or  to  the  alienist — 
exactly  as  the  murderer  or  the  madman.  The 
state  has  not  destroyed  the  drink  habit.  What 
it  has  done  is  to  make  it  difficult  for  the  citi- 
zen to  satisfy  it.  Precisely  the  same  thing  it 
does  for  the  man  given  to  theft — it  makes  it  a 
difficult  trade  for  him  and  an  unprofitable 
one. 

England,  more  timidly,  attempted  a  similar 
reform;  but  in  England  the  rights  of  the  state 
have  never  been  so  emphatically  declared  as 
the  rights  of  the  individual;  and  the  proposals 
of  the  government  for  dealing  with  the  mis- 
chief of  drink  were  framed  on  conservative 
lines.  Their  one  object  was  to  remove  an 
obstacle  to  the  more  efficient  production  of  war 
material.  It  attempted  no  broad  ''  solution,'' 
as  it  is  called,  of  the  drink  question.  And  yet 
Parliament,  in  its  slow-moving,  cumbrous  but 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    189 

effective  way,  is  working  toward  just  such  an 
end.    It  has  faced  the  problem;  thus: 

^'  Clearly  it  would  be  an  enormous  gain  if 
the  direct  personal  financial  interest  of  the 
liquor  trader  were  eliminated,  and  all  pushing 
of  the  sale  of  drink  and  all  inducements  to 
the  seller  to  evade  the  law  were  abolished. 
That  can  only  be  done  by  taking  the  trade 
out  of  the  hands  of  those  who  now  conduct  it 
and  placing  it  under  the  control  of  persons 
whose  only  object  would  be  to  promote  the 
public  well-being,  and  who  would  have  no 
interest  in  pushing  the  sale  or  conniving  at 
breaches  of  the  law:  that  is  to  say,  by  placing 
it  under  disinterested  management." 

This  is  the  road  to  the  state  control  of  the 
manufacture  and  sale  of  alcohol,  which  is, 
after  all,  the  simplest  and  most  efficacious 
means  of  curbing  intemperance;  and  it  is  well 
within  the  rather  rigid  lines  of  English  policy. 

Why  is  it — let  us  put  a  question  to  each 
other — why  is  it  that  the  first  great  problem 
of  the  nations,  tested  in  the  fire  of  war,  was 
that  of  drink?  That  was  not  true  of  other  huge 
wars,  Grantian,  Napoleonic  or  Caesarean.  If 
you   answer   the   question,  you   will   get  close 


190  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

to  the  heart  of  what  is  rottenest  in  our  civili- 
zation. 

II 

Ours  is  the  drunkennest  civilization  the 
world  has  ever  known. 

Oh!  I  know,  there  are  wonderful  temperance 
movements,  teetotal  crusades,  high  and  strenu- 
ous attempts  to  win  mankind  back  to  sanity 
of  mind  and  body;  I  know.  You  have  seen 
how  decent  society  is  pulling  that  way;  how 
the  Church  is  pulling  that  way.  Glancing  back 
at  the  memoirs  of  the  Georgian  period,  even 
those  of  the  early  Victorian  age — glancing  back 
or  listening  to  the  hectic  recollections  of  your 
great-uncle  who  lived  and  drank  in  the  last 
century — you  may  fancy  that  was  a  drunken 
world.  And  you  see  and  hear  only  a  part. 
The  duke  and  the  brewer  got  drunk;  the  rich- 
ling  got  drunk;  but  the  average  man,  being  a 
poor  man,  stayed  sober — reluctantly  it  may  be, 
but  at  all  events  he  stayed  sober.  Look  up 
the  facts.  The  annual  output  of  drink  was  so 
small  that  the  consumption  "  per  head  "—to 
repeat  that  dreadful  phrase — was  necessarily 
small.     There  was  not  enough  liquor  made  in 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    191 

England,  for  example,  to  keep  the  population 
drunk.  There  was  only  a  certain  quantity — 
on  the  hither  side  of  drunkenness — for  each 
individual;  and  the  man  who  got  drunk  was 
taking  the  share  of  five  men,  who  were  or- 
dained, thus,  to  be  sober. 

With  the  rise  of  the  age  of  a  harsh  and  sav- 
age materialism,  that  was  neither  to  bind  nor 
to  hold,  there  came  strange  things  to  pass. 
Some  of  them  are  doubtless  in  your  mind.  Sci- 
ence made  wonderful  discoveries;  and  in  the 
trail  of  the  sane  laborious  scientists  there 
thronged  all  the  mountebanks  of  thought — 
the  Huxleys  and  Haeckels,  who  beat  the  drum 
in  front  of  the  booths  of  science.  Came,  too, 
the  harlequins  of  a  dirty  and  materialistic 
literature,  from  Zola  (whose  appropriate  death 
was  that  he  should  be  drowned  in  the  vomit 
of  his  dogs)  to  that  bad  and  sneering  old 
man,  Anatole  France.  Morality  was  kicked 
out  of  philosophy,  as  idealism  was  thrown  out 
of  literature.  The  world's  thought  became  at 
once  mean  and  dirty.  (In  poor  old  England 
the  most  conspicuous  "  intellectual "  was  the 
dreadful  Bernard  Shaw;  one  nation  fared  no 
better  than  another.) 


192  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

Now  it  was  in  trade,  manufacture  and  com- 
merce that  materialism  expressed  itself  in  the 
most  grotesque  and  irresponsible  way;  until, 
as  a  final  illustration,  you  had  the  colossal 
Kultur  of  Germany — an  iron  monster  splashed 
with  blood. 

My  business  here  and  now  is  with  the  mak- 
ing of  drink  in  a  ruthless  and  materialistic  age. 
Of  old  a  nation  made  its  drink;  and  drank  it. 
Wine  did  not  go  far  from  home;  or  it  went 
with  difficulty  and  at  an  expense  which  made 
it  a  drink  only  for  the  rich.  Beer  was  brewed 
for  home  needs.  Liquors  the  same.  Then 
began  the  "  boom  "  in  the  manufacture  of  all 
things  for  man's  needs  or  vices — intoxicating 
beverages  like  the  rest.  Easy  transport  car- 
ried them  everywhere;  but  in  spite  of  easy 
transport  there  was  over-production.  Creating 
intoxicating  drink  in  huge  quantities,  the  in- 
dustrial world  had  to  find  means  of  making 
the  people  drink  it.  It  had  to  find  consumers. 
It  was  not,  you  note,  providing  drink  to  satisfy 
the  thirst  of  the  nations.  What  it  supplied 
was  far  in  advance  of  the  demand.  Like  every 
other  industry,  its  one  aim  was  to  increase 
its  output.    And  there  followed  the  grim  need 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    193 

of  finding  new  markets.  It  poured  its  torrents 
of  wine,  beer  and  alcohol  into  the  home- 
markets  and  sought  for  markets  abroad. 

(An  illustration;  I  take  it  from  the  Boston 
Herald: 

"  After  waiting  three  days  for  favorable 
winds,  the  four-masted  schooner  Orleans,  Cap- 
tain Rutledge,  sailed  to  the  relief  of  the  natives 
of  the  west  coast  of  Africa  with  two  hundred 
thousand  gallons  of  rum  in  her  hold.  The 
vessel  had  been  loading  for  two  weeks  with 
hogsheads,  casks  and  kegs,  and  when  she  set 
sail  every  available  space  below  hatches  was 
occupied.  There  was  scarcely  room  for  casks 
of  water  for  the  crew.  It  was  thought  they 
would  have  to  live  on  rum.  When  this  was 
noised  about  there  was  a  great  scramble  for 
berths.  A  complement  of  men  was  signed  up, 
but  all  were  made  to  sign  the  pledge  before 
the  boat  left.  The  underwriters  demanded 
it." 

Without  comment.) 

What  were  they  doing,  these  "  industrials " 
of  beer,  wine,  spirits? 

Building  up  wealth,  they  would  tell  you.  It 
was   the  slogan   of  their  materialistic   genera- 


194  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

tion.  They  were  doing  what  other  manufac- 
turers did — producing  all  they  could  and  forc- 
ing the  people  to  consume.  Side  by  side  with 
the  making  of  drink  went  a  crusade  of  adver- 
tisement to  force  the  drink  down.  Wealth- 
building  went  on  apace — at  the  mere  cost  of 
public  health,  sanity,  morality,  safety  of  the 
state.  And  that  the  profits  to  brewer  and  dis- 
tiller (these  ''industrials")  might  be  greater, 
fraud  was  called  in  to  do  its  work.  Chem- 
istry found  dirtier  and  more  poisonous  com- 
pounds. Industry  hailed  with  approval  the 
German  chemist  who  found  a  way  of  ''  dis- 
tilling brandy  from  sawdust."  In  floods  tor- 
rential the  alcoholic  poison  was  poured  over 
the  lands.  Waste  and  abuse.  The  govern- 
ments, one  and  all,  looked  on  without  disap- 
proval. Indeed,  they  shared  gleefully  in  the 
plunder.  Often  they  knowingly  permitted  the 
poison  adulterations  that  their  share  of  the 
unclean  profit  might  be  the  greater.  (Go,  buy 
a  bottle  of  beer  made  an5rwhere  in  the  United 
States,  set  it  out  in  the  sunlight  and  see  what 
will  happen.)  The  conscience  of  the  nation 
was  as  torpid  as  that  of  a  brewer.  It  was 
blunted  and  deformed  as  the  conscience  of  a 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    195 

distiller.  Until  war  came  and  woke  it.  Said 
the  State:  ''I  have  the  right  to  ask  of  each 
man  his  life  and  goods  in  the  face  of  this 
fierce  aggression — now  the  Uhlans  are  at  the 
gate — and  surely  I  have  the  right  to  ask  him 
to  sacrifice  his  profits  and  his  vices,  even  in 
time  of  peace,  when  they  destroy  the  welfare 
of  the  state." 

It  had  learned  a  lesson.  You  have  seen  the 
beginning.  You  have  seen  two  great  nations 
toss  lightly  overboard  the  private  advantages 
of  the  distilling  few  for  the  sake  of  the  gen- 
eral welfare.  There  had  come  home  to  them 
the  plain  truth  that  to  abolish  alcoholism 
it  had  but  to  stop  the  manufacture  of  alcohol. 

But  the  vested  interests? 

I  am  going  to  say  more  than  a  word  or  two 
or  three  about  these  vested  interests  all  in  due 
time.    Here  let  me  make  one  blunt  statement: 

There  is  no  contradiction  between  ethics 
and  economics, 

I  say  there  is  no  contradiction  between  ethics 
and  economics  in  a  civilization  which  is  not 
based  upon  greed,  industrialism  and  a  corrupt 
materialism.  I  will  admit  that  the  generation 
out  of   the   influence   of  which   we   are   pass- 


196  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

ing — with  splendid  strides — held  to  that  bad 
conception;  but  it  belongs  to  an  ante-bellum 
past.  We  have  gone  back  to  Plato  in  this — 
not  the  wealth  of  a  nation  but  the  highest  wel- 
fare of  the  citizens  is  the  thing  to  be  promoted. 
And  where  there  is  discord  between  economics 
and  ethics,  it  is  the  economical  factor  that 
must  give  way.  The  United  States  settled  that 
question  when  she  swept  slavery  off  her  map; 
and  paid  in  blood.  England,  in  no  less  noble 
a  fashion,  freed  the  slaves  under  her  flag,  and 
paid  in  gold. 

I  do  not  see  how  there  should  ever  be  any 
debate  as  to  which  is  to  be  destroyed — the  huge 
profits  for  a  few,  or  the  immense  losses  in 
health,  character,  happiness,  wealth  for  the 
many.  I,  for  one,  shall  never  consent  to  weigh 
dollars  against  human  welfare.  No  sane  man 
would,  did  he  understand  the  situation.  Be- 
hind the  whole  economic  argument  against 
interference  with  drink-producers  there  is  one 
lie  that  I  want  to  bring  out  into  the  light.  It 
is  one  of  a  dirty  battalion  of  lies,  for  the  brew- 
ers with  their  venerable  scientists,  the  distillers 
with  their  ^'  health-apostles,"  even  the  viticul- 
turists  with  their  parade  of  poor  hectic  women, 


DRINK  AND  NATIONAL  CRISES    197 

are  prolific  in  false  arguments.  The  one  I  have 
in  mind,  however,  is  the  worst  of  them  all, 
for  it  has  a  grave  air  of  sincerity.  It  is  the 
argument  that  '^  the  abolition  of  the  liquor 
traffic  will  create  a  financial  panic  "  and,  since 
"  a  million  toilers  will  lose  their  jobs,"  it  will 
create  also  a  labor  panic. 

The  simplest  answer  would  be  a  calm,  indif- 
ferent, ethical   retort: 

'^Well,  what  if  it  did?" 

But,  there  is  an  ampler  reply,  which  may  find 
place  (with  your  permission)  in  another 
chapter. 


CHAPTER  X 
ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS 


To  abolish  alcoholism  you  have  but  to  stop 
the  manufacture  of  alcohol. 

But  men,  you  say,  will  drink  in  spite  of  law; 
in  some  furtive  way  they  will  get  their  alco- 
holic poison.  Possibly.  Probably.  There  are 
stern  laws  against  murder,  but  men  kill  their 
fellows.  There  are  laws  against  theft,  but  bad 
men  go  on  stealing.  No  law  succeeds  in  pro- 
hibiting the  crime  against  which  it  is  enacted. 
All  it  can  do  is  to  set  that  particular  crime 
outside  the  law  and  to  punish  the  outlaw.  Only 
when  the  social  environment  is  favorable  to 
prohibition  will  prohibition  prohibit;  only 
when  the  social  environment  is  against  lynch- 
ing will  lynchers  cease  to  lynch — be  the  law 
what  it  may;  only  when  the  social  environ- 
ment is  unfavorable  to  white-slavery  will  that 
bad  business  cease — no  matter  how  repressive 

198 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  199 

a  Mann  law  be  enacted.  That  is  self-evident. 
In  these  instances,  the  nation,  as  exemplified  in 
its  laws,  is  against  lynching  and  against  white- 
slavery.  It  has  not,  with  all  its  power,  been 
able  to  suppress  them  wholly.  Until  a  clean 
social  environment  has  been  created  they  will 
exist,  though  in  an  obscurely  vicious  way.  In 
an  imperfect  stage  of  civilization  one  does 
not  expect  a  governmental  law  to  prohibit 
crime — but  largely  to  prevent  it  and  certainly 
to  punish  it.  A  law  to  prohibit  the  manufac- 
ture and  sale  of  alcoholic  beverages  could  be 
enforced  as  completely  as  any  other  law. 

In  two-thirds  of  the  territory  of  the  United 
States  the  saloon  has  been  abolished.  And  this 
is  not  an  empty  territory;  it  houses  fully  sixty 
per  cent,  of  the  population.  How  did  these 
wise  and  civic-sane  citizens  get  the  kind  of  pro- 
hibition they  have  won?  They  got  it  in  spite 
of  the  national  government;  they  won  it  in 
local  battles  in  township,  county  and  state;  and 
their  mightiest  enemy  was  the  Federal  Gov- 
ernment. To-day  when  they  have  established 
local  laws  of  clean-living  and  sobriety — when 
they  have  closed  the  saloons  and  barrooms  and 
prohibited  the  sale  of  drink,  what,  think  you, 


200  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

the  government  does?  Over  the  heads  of  the 
local  authorities  it  issues  licenses  for  the  traffic 
in  alcohol.  And  it  uses  all  the  forces  of  the 
interstate  commerce  laws  to  force  the  sale  of 
drink  in  these  states  which  have  declared  they 
would  fain  be  sober.  Maine  is  a  prohibition 
state.  It  forbids  the  making  and  selling  of 
alcoholic  drinks.  Does  Washington  respect 
this  declaration?  In  spite  of  the  state — in  spite 
of  the  will  of  the  people,  their  royal  Will-to- 
be-Sober — the  Federal  Government  has  issued 
in  Maine  four  hundred  and  thirty-four  retail 
licenses  and  has  licensed  one  hundred  and 
eighteen  druggists  to  dispense  liquor.  That  is 
what  "  Uncle  Sam  "  has  done  in  Maine  in  the 
face  of  a  state's  protest.  More  discreditable  is 
the  fact  that  the  Federal  Government  has 
issued,  in  Kansas,  licenses  to  the  very  criminals 
— ''  boot-leggers  "  and  the  like — who  have  been 
arrested  and  convicted  for  violating  the  Kansas 
prohibition  law.  And  in  these  dry  states  it  is 
using  the  United  States  mails  for  advertising 
drink. 

How  comes  this  to  pass? 

Washington  is  the  headquarters  of  the  alco- 
hol forces  of  the  nation.  There  are  mobilized 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  201 

the  congressional  defenders  of  drink.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  nation  has  declared  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  pandemic  plague  of  drink.  In  two- 
thirds  of  the  nation  the  saloons  have  been 
closed.  Against  the  will  and  purpose  of 
these  two-thirds  stand  the  distiller-owned  and 
brewer-fed  congressmen.  What  states  do  they 
come  from? 

Four  states  in  the  union  contain  more  than 
one-half  of  the  saloons  in  existence.  And  these 
same  states,  mark  you,  are  the  homes  of  more 
than  one-half  of  the  congressmen  who  voted  in 
the  House  of  Representatives  against  national 
prohibition.  And  one  state  took  the  lead  in 
this  battle  to  thwart  the  will  of  the  nation. 
That  state  was  New  York,  which  contains  to-day 
more  saloons  than  all  the  thirty-six  states  whose 
legislatures  have  the  power  to  ratify  and  make 
effective  a  federal  constitutional  amendment 
prohibiting  the  liquor  traffic. 

One-half  of  the  representatives  who  voted 
against  national  prohibition  came  from  the  six 
largest  and  drunkennest  cities  in  the  country — 
from  cities  brewer-ruled  and  distiller-directed. 
In  other  words,  the  final  destruction  of  the 
liquor  traffic  has  narrowed  down  to  a  contest 


202  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

with  the  vicious  and  immoral  voting  mobs  of 
the  great  drink-controlled  cities.  It  is  in  these 
cities  the  distillers  and  brewers  are  making 
their  last  stand.  The  drunkard's  vote  and  the 
corrupt  congressman  alone  stand  in  the  way  of 
the  nation's  will  to  be  sober.  Nothing  else — 
save,  of  course,  the  tainted  financial  interests 
behind  this  traffic  in  poison. 

In  Russia  you  had  a  government  which  held 
in  its  hand  the  entire  business  of  drink — sale 
and  production;  when  the  nation's  life  was  at 
stake  it  closed  an  iron  hand  and  throttled  the 
bad  business.  In  spite  of  protest — in  spite 
of  the  outcries  of  the  drink-bought  press  and 
drink-bought  agitators.  In  the  United  States 
the  situation  is  reversed,  for  it  is  the  people 
that  is  straining  forward  towards  sober  living, 
while  the  national  government — by  its  system 
of  federal  licenses  and  mail-carried  drink — is 
trying  to  whip  the  nation  back  into  drunken- 
ness. 

So  stands  the  case. 

What  is  certain  is  that  in  the  end  the  people 
will  have  their  way.  The  progress  is  steady. 
Already  a  "  wet  and  dry  "  map  of  the  United 
States  shows   that  two-thirds   of   the   territory 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  203 

has  been  written  over  with  state  or  local  enact- 
ments of  prohibition.  And  the  movement  goes 
on?  It  cannot  be  stopped.  Public  opinion  has 
spoken.  What  the  war-startled  nations  did  in 
their  peril  will  be  done  in  the  United  States — 
in  the  slower  ways  of  peace. 

Against  the  will  of  the  nation  stands  only  one 
force:  It  is  the  dirty  army  of  those  who  make 
a  profit  out  of  alcohol — and  their  dirtier  political 
hirelings. 

Who  makes  that  profit? 

You  are  a  reasonable  man;  and  by  grace  of 
your  sane  reason  you  know  that  there  is  no  profit 
in  the  business  for  anyone  save  for  those  who 
make  and  sell  the  stuff  and  for  the  gamblers, 
prostitutes  and  parasites  whose  profits  come 
from  the  drink-fuddled  citizens.  You  have 
heard  a  great  deal  of  the  losses  that  will  fall 
upon  brewer  and  distiller,  saloon-keeper  and 
the  owner  of  property  used  by  the  drink  trade; 
I  do  not  fancy  you  are  much  perturbed  at 
the  thought  of  these  losses.  You  have  heard 
before  a  similar  wail  from  the  red-light  dis- 
trict, for  the  white-slaver  whines  as  whined 
the  black-slaver  of  Jamaica.  Money  loss  in 
the  face  of  moral  gain  is  negligible;  in  a  clash 


204  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

between  ethics  and  economics  it  is  the  latter 
that  must  go  to   the  wall. 

But  with  the  whine  of  the  liquor  dealers  there 
goes  a  threat — a  threat  of  national  economic 
disaster.  They  hold  in  hand,  they  assert,  ^^  the 
most  disastrous  panic  in  all  history,"  which  they 
can  loose  upon  the  country  if  it  goes  against 
them. 

It  is  a  serious  thing,  that  threat.  .France 
heard  it  when  she  banned  absinthe;  Russia 
heard  it  when  she  prohibited  the  sale  and  manu- 
facture of  all  alcoholic  drink;  it  was  inevitable 
that  it  should  be  heard  in  this  country. 

Let  us  hear  the  threat.  At  least  it  is  the 
sort  of  thing  one  can  answer.  The  whine  is 
more  difficult  to  meet — with  its  specious  plea 
for  "  human  liberty,"  for  man's  "  inalienable 
right "  to  break  any  social  law  of  which  he 
does  not  approve.  A  whine  is  an  illogical  emo- 
tional appeal;  but  a  threat  to  create  an  eco- 
nomic disaster  can  be  met. 


II 

There   is   an  official   spokesman  of   alcohol. 
His  title  has  a  full-fronted  pomposity  about  it, 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  205 

which  should  not  be  abbreviated.  Joseph  De- 
bar is  the  "  Secretary  of  the  National  Whole- 
sale Liquor  Dealers'  Association  of  America  " — 
a  ten-word  pomposity.  I  shall  let  him  state  his 
threat  and  argument  in  his  own  words. 

Thus: 

"  Put  as  briefly  as  possible,  the  different 
effects  of  nation-wide  prohibition  may  be  stated 
as  follows: 

"  Abolition  of  business  representing  a  capi- 
talization estimated  at  from  $3,000,000,000  to 
$5,000,000,000. 

"  Absolute  loss  of  a  large  proportion  of  the 
assets  of  this  industry  and  tremendous  depre- 
ciation in  value  of  the  remainder. 

^^  Closing  up  of  over  two  thousand  four  hun- 
dred plants  manufacturing  distilled,  malt  and 
vinous  liquors,  having  a  capital,  by  the  1909 
census,  of  $831,000,000,  purchasing  raw  mate- 
rials valued  at  $169,000,000  annually  and  turn- 
ing out  a  product  valued  at  over  $630,000,000 
annually. 

"  Closing  up  of  over  two  hundred  and  three 
thousand  retail  liquor  establishments  with  an 
investment  running  up  into  many  millions  of 
dollars. 


2o6  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

^^  Bankruptcy  for  thousands  of  these  manu- 
facturers, wholesalers  and  retailers,  who  will 
find  themselves  facing  a  tremendous  loss  on 
property,  the  value  of  which  is  either  wiped 
out  or  greatly  depreciated  and  a  large  propor- 
tion of  whose  debtors  in  the  same  line  of  busi- 
ness will  be  unable  to  meet  bills  due. 

"  Switching  thousands  of  these  dealers  to 
other  lines  of  industry,  where  they  will  come 
into  competition  with  their  brains  and  what  is 
left  of  their  capital  with  manufacturers  and 
merchants  already  in  those  fields. 

^'  Loss  to  railroads  of  the  country  of  revenue 
on  traffic  running  up  into  millions  of  dollars, 
netting  them  a  considerable  percentage  of  their 
income  from  freight.  According  to  the  United 
States  Statistical  Abstract  for  1913,  the  total 
movement  of  manufactures  of  the  wine,  whisky 
and  beer  industries  in  191 2  amounted  to  over 
seven  million  tons,  or  two  and  a  half  per  cent, 
of  the  total  traffic  of  all  manufacturing  indus- 
tries of  the  country.  This  does  not  take  into 
consideration  the  shipment  of  grain  and  other 
raw  materials  to  the  distilleries,  breweries  and 
wineries,  nor  does  it  take  cognizance  of  by- 
products like  dried  feed,  which,  when  shipped 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  207 

away,  represents  from  twenty  to  forty  per  cent, 
of  the  bulk  of  the  grain  going  to  these  plants; 
nor  does  it  take  notice  of  shipments  between 
wholesalers  and  retailers  and  retail  dealers  and 
customers. 

'^  Loss  of  billions  of  dollars  to  wholesale 
grocers,  hotel-owners,  restaurant-keepers,  drug- 
gists, both  wholesale  and  retail,  most  of  whom 
ordinarily  are  not  classed  by  the  public  with 
liquor  industries." 

And  Mr.  Debar  goes  on  to  argue  that  there 
would  be  "  billions  of  dollars  "  of  loss  to  barrel- 
makers,  bottle-makers,  printers,  truck-manufac- 
turers, builders,  yeast-makers;  that  the  millions 
worth  of  grain  and  fruit  used  by  the  liquor- 
makers  would  go  to  waste — that  everyone  from 
the  bag-man  to  the  farm  laborer  would  suffer 
financially,  since  brewers  and  distillers  would 
have  no  money  to  pass  on  to  them.  And  he 
notes : 

^'  Loss  of  $230,000,000  annually  in  internal 
revenue  and  over  $18,000,000  in  customs  reve- 
nue; a  grand  total  of  nearly  $250,000,000,  over 
one-third  of  the  total  annual  income  from  all 
sources. 

"  Necessity  of  raising  this  vast  sum  in  other 


208  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

directions.  The  difficulty  of  this  will  be  ap- 
parent to  all  who  recall  the  stress  attendant 
upon  the  imposition  a  short  time  back  of  a 
$1,000,000,000  war  tax." 

Gloomiest  of  all  is  his  apprehension  of  the 
cost  of  the  maintenance  of  ''  a  vast  army  of 
United  States  officials  to  enforce  the  law  " — 
which  is  the  prettiest  argument  ever  advanced. 
I  may  suggest  that  one  might  merely  take  the 
police  now  occupied  with  the  crimes  and  crimi- 
nals, created  by  drink,  and  set  them  to  watch 
the  liquor-dealers  who  did  not  obey  the  law. 
There  would  be  plenty  of  police  for  the  work, 
since  it  is  a  statistical  fact  that  eighty-four  per 
cent,  of  their  work  is  due  to  alcohol-begotten 
crime.  They  would  have  plenty  of  time  on 
their  hands  to  look  after  the  '^  enforcement 
of  the  law  "  against  dealing  in  liquor — ample 
time,  Mr.  Debar.  And  I  am  not  of  the  opinion 
that  the  nation  would  grudge  the  price  it  paid 
for  that  sort  of  police  protection. 

Read  on: 

'^  Loss  to  the  state  of  many  millions;  to  coun- 
tries of  other  millions  and  to  incorporated 
places  having  a  population  of  two  thousand 
five    hundred    and    over,    of    $51,955,001,    a 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  209 

grand  total  running  up  into  the  hundreds  of 
millions  every  year  in  liquor  license  and  tax 
receipts. 

"  Greater  burden  of  direct  taxation  to  fall 
upon  all  the  population  instead  of  upon  those 
who  now  voluntarily  pay  the  tax  indirectly 
when  they  see  fit  to  purchase  liquors. 

"  How  many  banks  would  be  forced  to  the 
wall  along  with  the  crash  in  other  directions  no 
man  would  undertake  to  say.  How  many  mil- 
lions of  unemployed  would  walk  the  streets  for 
months  and  possibly  years  there  is  no  way  of 
figuring." 

There  is  the  argument,  put  as  strongly  as  it 
can  be  put  by  the  shrewd,  alarmed  secretary 
of  the  traffickers  in  alcohol.  When  you  analyze 
it  you  see  it  is  only  a  threat — a  money  threat. 
In  lesser  proportion  it  is  precisely' the  argument 
of  the  ''  red-light  district,"  which  showed  how 
house  property  would  suffer  if  the  law  were 
enforced — how  thousands  of  employees  would 
be  thrown  out  of  work  and  how  the  neigh- 
boring vendors  of  food  and  musk  and  rouge 
and  silk  kimonos  would  suffer.  The  argu- 
ment of  Mr.  Debar  is  quintessentially  the 
same. 


210  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

And  it  smells  bad. 

Unclean  as  the  argument  is — immoral  as  it 
is — it  has  been  effective  in  terrifying  the  voter, 
especially  the  laboring  man.  So  men  of  fore- 
sight and  intellectual  probity  have  deemed  it 
worth  answering.  They  have  pulled  to  pieces 
its  fallacy.  They  have  carefully  abstracted 
from  it  what  was  true  and  sought  and  found 
a  remedy.  Indeed,  a  group  of  important  soci- 
ologists, of  which  Mr.  Charles  Stelzle  is  the 
head,  has  made  a  comprehensive  survey  of  the 
economical  aspects  of  the  liquor  problem.  As 
clearly  as  Mr.  Debar,  they  recognize  that 
"  there  may  be  dislocation  of  a  temporary  kind 
in  the  labor  world  because  of  the  change  " — 
the  words  are  Mr.  Roosevelt's  words — and  they 
have  formulated  a  plan  to  meet  it. 

Three  things  they  set  themselves  to  do: 

To  demonstrate  that  the  abolition  of  the 
liquor  traffic  will  not  create  a  labor  panic. 

To  assist  in  establishing  temporary  labor 
exchanges  to  find  work  for  those  losing  their 
jobs  through  prohibitory  legislation. 

To  promote  the  organization  of  adequate  so- 
cial centers  as  substitutes  for  the  saloon. 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  211 

III 

First  the  demonstration;  and  I  would  ask  you 
to  read  carefully  this  victorious  reply  to  Mr. 
Debar's  money  threat;  it  was  written  by  Mr. 
Charles  Stelzle  and  printed  (for  five  million 
readers)   in  Mr.  Hearst's  newspapers: 

^'  The  argument  that  the  abolition  of  the 
liquor  traffic  will  create  a  financial  panic  is 
based  entirely  upon  the  absurd  proposition  that 
if  the  liquor  dealers  fail  to  get  the  money  now 
spent  for  beer  and  whisky  nobody  else  will 
get  it. 

^'  It  is  assumed  that  if  a  man  doesn't  spend 
a  dollar  for  booze,  he  will  throw  that  dollar 
into  the  sewer  or  into  some  kind  of  a  bottom- 
less pit,  instead  of  using  it  to  purchase  some 
other  commodity,  which  will  do  good  instead  of 
harm,  which  will  have  a  permanent  value,  and 
which  will  give  the  workingmen  of  the  coun- 
try more  work,  more  wages  and  greater  pros- 
perity every  way  than  if  the  same  amount  of 
money  were  spent  for  beer  and  whisky. 

"  Every  workingman  knows  that  we  are  not 
suffering  from  over-production,  but  from  under- 
consumption.   He  is  painfully  conscious  of  the 


212  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

fact  that  he  doesn't  live  as  well  as  he  should  in 
comparison  with  others  who  do  not  work  as 
hard  as  he  does,  and  that  he  cannot  give  his 
family  the  benefits  which  they  deserve.  There- 
fore, it  will  not  injure  him  particularly  if  the 
brewery  and  distillery  owners  were  to  put  their 
^  brains  and  what  is  left  of  their  capital '  when 
the  liquor  business  is  destroyed  into  the  pro- 
duction of  materials  which  will  give  him  more 
of  the  comforts  of  life  here  and  now,  and  less 
of  the  torments  both  here  and  hereafter. 

"  As  for  the  '  poor  farmer '  who  would  suf- 
fer so  grievously,  according  to  the  defender  of 
the  saloon,  because  the  brewers  and  distillers 
would  fail  to  buy  his  grain  and  grapes,  his 
apples  and  cherries — there  is  no  fear  that  he 
will  buy  fewer  automobiles  and  less  farm  ma- 
chinery, and  all  the  other  modern  conveniences 
which  he  now  enjoys,  because  somebody  else 
will  buy  his  apples  and  cherries,  his  grain  and 
grapes — besides,  economists  and  farm  experts 
are  even  now  afraid  that  the  American  farmer 
w^ill  soon  be  unable  to  raise  enough  grain  ade- 
quately to  supply  his  country. 

^'  Regarding  the  railroad  man  who  would 
no  longer  handle  the  ^  2.5  per  cent,  of  the  total 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  213 

traffic  of  all  manufacturing  industries  of  the 
country/  which  the  liquor  business  now  fur- 
nishes— nobody  doubts  for  a  single  moment  that 
the  railroad  man  will  get  as  much  business  and 
as  much  money  from  the  transfer  of  a  given 
amount  of  grain,  whether  that  grain  is  shipped 
to  a  brewer  or  a  baker.  As  for  the  transpor- 
tation of  the  finished  product,  as  well  as  the 
raw  materials  which  the  liquor  industry  now 
furnishes,  other  industries  which  would  bene- 
fit through  the  transfer  of  trade  from  liquor 
to  some  other  commodity  would  undoubtedly 
supply  as  much  business  for  the  railroad  man 
as  the  brewers  and  distillers  do." 

The  harshest  edge  of  the  liquor  argument  is 
turned  towards  the  workingman.  The  liquor 
business,  Mr.  Debar  avers,  is  the  fifth  in  im- 
portance in  the  United  States;  and  its  aboli- 
tion would  throw  out  of  work  one-fifth  of  the 
nation's  labor,  you  are  to  assume.  The  sug- 
gestion makes  for  misconception.  There  are 
6,616,046  workers  in  the  industries  of  the  coun- 
try. Of  these  only  62,920  are  employed  in  the 
liquor  industry — only  about  one  per  cent. 

"  Taking  five  leading  industries  in  this  coun- 
try— namely,  textiles  and  the  finished  products, 


214  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

iron  and  steel  and  their  products,  lumber  and  its 
manufactures,  leather  and  its  finished  products, 
and  paper  and  printing,  and  comparing  them 
with  the  liquor  business  (including  the  malting 
industry)  with  regard  to  the  number  of  wage- 
earners  employed,  capital  invested  and  wages 
paid,  we  arrive  at  some  interesting  conclusions. 
Based  upon  the  figures  found  in  the  Abstract 
of  Statistics  of  Manufacture,  we  discover  that 
the  number  of  wage-earners  for  each  one  mil- 
lion dollars  invested  in  each  of  these  industries 
was  as  follows:  Liquor,  77;  Textiles,  578;  Iron, 
284;  Lumber,  579;  Leather,  469;  and  Paper, 

367-" 

In  plainer  words,  every  million  dollars  in- 
vested in  the  drink  industry  gives  employment 
to  only  seventy-seven  men — while  a  similar  sum 
invested  in  lumber,  for  example,  gives  a  living 
to  five  hundred  and  seventy-nine  men. 

What  is  all  this  boast  about  what  the  liquor 
industry  is  doing  for  labor?  The  ratio  of  wages 
paid  to  the  workers  in  proportion  to  the  capital 
invested  is  so  criminally  small  that  it  should 
not  stand  for  an  hour — in  the  face  of  this  so- 
ciological investigation  which  Mr.  Stelzle  and 
his  associates  have  made.    In  the  textile  Indus- 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  215 

tries — and  that  fairly  represents  all  the  other 
industries — the  ratio  of  wages  paid  to  capi- 
tal invested  is  23.9  per  cent.;  a  fair  ratio; 
in  the  liquor  business  the  ratio  is  5.6  per 
cent. 

It  is  not  much  that  the  laboring  man  gets  out 
of  the  millions  invested  in  alcohol.  Small  in- 
deed is  the  financial  harm  he  would  suffer  were 
it  taken  away. 

What  of  the  two  billions  the  country  spends 
a  year  in  drink? 

Simply  this :  Were  it  spent  for  food  and  cloth- 
ing, it  would  give  employment  to  nearly  eight 
times  as  many  workers,  who  would  receive  col- 
lectively five  and  a  half  times  as  much  in 
wages. 

So  absurd  is  that  threat  of  a  ''  labor  panic." 
In  fact,  the  only  workers  who  would  be  thrown 
out  into  a  society  in  which  there  was  no  demand 
for  their  work  would  be  the  bona-fide  brewers, 
maltsters,  distillers  and  rectifiers,  whose  occu- 
pations are  peculiar  to  the  liquor  industries; 
they  would  have  to  find  new  trades ;  but,  in  all, 
there  are  only  fifteen  thousand  of  them — and 
they  could  easily  be  fitted  into  a  sober  com- 
monwealth. 


2i6  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

One  point  more:  the  loss  to  the  state  of  the 
tax  in  the  making  and  selling  of  drink. 

"All  choice  implies  loss;"  and  over  against 
this  loss  to  the  state  there  should  be  set  the 
gain,  which  would  come  from  the  abolition  of 
the  crime,  pauperism  and  insanity  which  is 
caused  directly  and  indirectly  by  drink.  In- 
deed, the  loss  in  revenue,  even  were  it  one- 
third  of  the  nation's  income — as  in  Russia — 
could  be  lightly  borne  by  a  nation  that  had 
regained  the  sober  way  of  life. 

The  saloon  is  an  economic  loss.  There  is 
no  profit  in  alcohol  for  the  laborer  or  for  the 
state.  The  only  profit  goes  to  those  who  manu- 
facture it  and  dispense  it — to  them  and  their 
hangers-on,  the  Falstaff  army  of  wasters  and 
criminals,  the  vice-ridden  and  the  morally  im- 
potent. Nor  is  this  evil  profit  a  thing  that  may 
not  be  touched;  neither  law  nor  equity  nor 
convention  has  drawn  round  it  a  magic  circle 
of  protection.  The  traffic  in  alcohol  is  inher- 
ently criminal.  Every  man  who  has  engaged 
in  the  traffic  has  done  so  with  the  knowledge 
that  the  state  has  reserved  the  right  to  abolish 
it  when  and  how  it  pleases. 

It  is  a  maxim  of  law  that  impossibilities  shall 


ETHICS  AND  ECONOMICS  217 

be  required  of  no  one;  I  am,  therefore,  under 
no  obligation  to  convince  the  traffickers  in  drink 
of  the  dark  fact  that  they  are  poisoning  the 
springs  of  our  national  life.  Of  more  impor- 
tance is  the  fact  that  the  nation  has  been  con- 
vinced and,  by  vote  and  enactment,  seventy-one 
per  cent,  of  the  nation  has  recorded  its  convic- 
tion. But  what  I  trust  I  have  made  clear, 
even  to  the  brewer  and  distiller,  to  vendor  and 
divekeeper,  is  that  their  threat  of  "  a  national 
economic  disaster"  is  an  empty  menace;  and  if, 
by  any  chance,  the  disaster  does  fall  it  will 
fall  exactly  where  it  should  fall — on  them  alone. 


CHAPTER  XI 
MEASURES  remedial; 


And  this  shall  be  a  short  chapter;  for  we 
have  nearly  reached  the  end  of  our  little  journey 
in  the  highways  and  byways  of  alcohol. 

The  danger  in  studying  a  question  so  vital — 
a  subject  with  such  a  surge  and  swing  of  emo- 
tion in  it — is  the  tendency  to  become  enthusi- 
astic and  slop  about.  This  is  especially  true 
when  one's  concern  is  with  the  individual  and 
not  with  the  larger  and  colder  aspects  of  na- 
tional reform. 

Civilization  after  all  is  a  fight;  and  while 
this  fight  against  alcohol  is  humanity's  fight, 
it  is  also — you  know  it  bitterly — a  battle  for 
the  life  of  many  a  man  who  is  dear  to  you, 
of  many  a  woman  you  love  and  for  the  life 
of  the  boy  at  your  hearth;  that  is  why  the  heart 
cries  aloud  in  it.  And  thence  come  the  wild 
emotionalism,   the   large,    enveloping   shallow- 

218 


MEASURES  REMEDIAL  219 

ness,  which  have  confused  and  distorted  the 
subject.  All  sorts  of  imaginative  postulates 
have  been  set  up.  There  has  been  strident  and 
meaningless  agitation  against  facts.  You  can 
understand  the  passionate  anger  of  those  who 
have  been  injured  by  drink;  you  can  appreciate 
the  sterner  and  more  dangerous  anger  of  the 
psychologist,  the  physiologist  and  the  sociologist 
who  have  traced  a  major  part  of  the  nation's 
crime,  insanity  and  degeneration  to  alcohol;  but 
you  find  it  difficult  to  study  fair-mindedly  the 
arguments  brought  forward  by  the  apologists 
for  drink.  And,  for  my  part,  I  admit  that  it  is 
not  easy  to  listen  cold-bloodedly  to  the  argu- 
ments of  the  viticulturists  and  the  vendors  of 
alcohol.  Their  skill  in  darkening  facts — their 
shifty  and  greedy  apologies  for  the  traffic  that 
brings  them  wealth — make  for  anger  rather 
than  acquiescence. 

And  so,  in  discussing  the  alcohol  question, 
the  besetting  danger  is  that  of  making  a  noise — 
of  preaching  and  declaiming — instead  of  taking 
it  as  a  matter  for  scientific  research  and  for 
adjustment  by  scientific  authority. 

I  trust  that  in  this  little  book  I  have  gone 
round  that  peril.     I  am  as  convinced  as  you 


220  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

can  be  of  the  wild  objectionableness  of  mere 
denunciation.  Doubtless  at  one  time  it  was 
necessary.  Honor  should  be  paid  the  men  of 
days  gone  by — the  men  of  to-day — who  stormed 
against  the  evils  of  drink.  Many  of  them 
were  great  men,  stamped  with  the  seal  of  fierce, 
swift  and  terrible  eloquence.  But  their  day  has 
gone  by.  The  emotional  way  of  fighting  drink 
is  obsolete. 

The  reason  is  that  the  hour  of  controversial 
issues  is  past. 

There  is  no  longer  any  dispute  as  to  the 
main  and  primary  facts  in  the  case  against 
alcohol. 

With  a  thoroughness  of  intellectual  treatment, 
which  none  can  gainsay,  our  masters  in  physi- 
ology, sociology  and  economics  have  pro- 
nounced judgment. 

The  physiologist  informs  you  that  alcohol, 
even  in  the  smallest  quantity,  is  a  poison,  which 
begins  its  bad  work  of  degeneration  on  the 
highest  functional  levels  of  the  brain — ^which 
destroys  its  man  from  the  top  downwards.  You 
have  read  what  he  has  to  say,  for  I  have  tried 
to  make  it  both  clear  and  emphatic.  But  let  me 
add  one  fact.     It  will  show  you  how  even  the 


MEASURES  REMEDIAL  221 

conservative  medical  men  have  broken  away 
from  an  old  habit  of  respect  for  alcohol  as  a 
"  drug."  Hitherto  whisky,  brandy  and  the 
like  figured  officially  as  ''  drugs  "  in  the  United 
States  Pharmacopoeia,  which  is  the  authorita- 
tive list  of  medicinal  preparations  recognized 
by  physicians.  The  list  is  now  being  revised 
and  the  committee  in  charge  has  voted  to  re- 
move from  it  whisky  and  brandy.  Neither  of 
them  will  be  used  in  the  future  in  making  up 
medicines.  The  physicians,  as  you  see,  have 
lined  up  with  modern  science. 

The  physiologist  has  declared  against  alco- 
hol; and  the  men  of  social  science  have  found 
in  alcohol  the  cause — the  very  causa  causans 
— of  the  greater  part  of  the  nation's  pauper- 
ism, crime  and  degeneration.  And  lastly  comes 
the  economist,  demonstrating  that  "  the  saloon 
represents  an  economic  loss." 

The  case,  you  note,  is  tolerably  complete. 

Modern  science — always  skeptical,  always 
restrained  in  judgment — has  investigated  and 
pronounced:  alcohol  is  a  poison  for  the  indi- 
vidual and  for  the  state.  It  is  a  pest  like  any 
other,  and  should  be  fought  as  one  fights  a 
pest.     In  this  pronouncement  of  science  there 


222  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

is  no  weak  and  untrained  vehemence;  there  is 
the  cold  and  steely  veracity  of  scientific  state- 
ment. You  cannot  get  away  from  it.  It  is 
plain  as  a  rock — as  a  fact.  What  common 
sense  saw  long  ago  science  has  affirmed  in  words 
unmistakable. 

And  the  nation  is  awake  to  the  truth. 

This  is  the  immense  implication  of  the  local 
enactments  against  drink  which  are  driving 
alcohol  out  of  two-thirds  of  the  territory  of 
the  United  States.  It  means  the  nation  has 
learned  the  truth  about  alcohol  and  that  it  is 
using  the  makeshift  weapons  it  can  lay  hands 
on  to  fight  it.  The  remedy  is  not  a  perfect  one; 
so  long  as  the  Federal  Government  does  not 
collaborate  it  will  remain  imperfect;  but  it 
implies  that  at  last  the  people  have  broken 
the  bad  inertia  of  the  habit  which  puts  up 
with  an  evil  because  it  cannot  be  wholly 
destroyed. 

There  is  something  almost  pathetic  in  this 
struggle  of  a  nation  to  free  itself  from  alco- 
holism. You  may  study  it  from  one  end  of 
the  country  to  the  other.  Everywhere  you  see 
the  Will-to-be-Sober  asserting  itself — oftenest  in 
ways  irrational  and  pathetically  grotesque.  One 


MEASURES  REMEDIAL  223 

is  to  post  up  in  public  the  names  of  those  who 
drink  too  much  for  social  quiet;  another  is  to 
hold  the  drink-seller  responsible  for  the  pauper- 
ism and  crime  of  his  clients;  while  in  a  third 
state  there  has  been  built  a  "  dipping-vat " 
for  the  ducking  of  drunkards;  and  there  are 
many  such  grotesque  attempts  to  palliate  the 
evil  done  by  drink.  It  is  not  by  such  make- 
shifts that  a  sober  civilization  will  become  pos- 
sible. They  make  only  for  sadness  and  deri- 
sion. 

What,  then,  is  the  remedy — and  I  mean  a 
remedy,  possible  of  application,  in  the  exist- 
ing stage  of  evolution? 

For  mark  this:  Man  is  not  perfected;  he  is 
something  that  is  trying  to  be.  The  race  is 
working  itself  out.  It  is  going  somewhere. 
And  through  war  and  plague  and  alcoholism 
evolution  is  working  exactly  as  it  is  working 
in  its  interlocking  atoms  that  whirl  and  quiver 
at  the  very  heart  of  matter.  In  human  nature 
it  is  working  to  make  man  more  humane;  it 
is  striving  to  make  a  better  race;  and  man's 
first  duty  is  to  help  on  that  evolution.  But 
evolution  does  not  advance  by  jumps.  It  goes 
forward  by  steps   and   degrees.     You   cannot 


224  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

expect  to  get  any  remedy  that  will  safeguard 
the  individual  against  alcoholism  or  sweep  it 
out  of  the  state.  That  is  what  should  be  done; 
that  is  the  ideal  end;  and  it  is  what  science 
declares  must  in  the  end  be  done.  To-day  any 
practicable  remedy  must  fit  the  times;  it  must 
be  in  harmony  with  our  stage  of  national  and 
individual  evolution.  I  have  shown  you  what 
therapeutic  and  psychologic  way  there  is  of  re- 
generating the  individual  victim  of  drink, 
whether  he  be  the  conspicuous  spree-victim  or 
that  masked  victim  who  fancies  he  can  drink 
and  be  sober. 

And  now  comes  the  question:  What  can  the 
state  do  to  alcohol? 

You  have  seen  how  Russia,  quietly  and  in 
time  of  peace,  took  over  the  entire  manufacture 
and  sale  of  alcohol,  so  that  when  the  time  of 
crisis  came  she  could  strangle  it  with  her  auto- 
cratic hands.  There  is  a  lesson  there.  State 
prohibition  is  a  step  on  the  right  road;  local 
option  is  admirable;  but  one  and  the  other  are 
defective  so  long  as  the  Federal  Government 
refuses  its  collaboration.  Only  the  power  at 
the  top  can  fight  so  big  an  evil.  A  federal  mo- 
nopoly of  the  manufacture  and  sale  of  alcohol 


MEASURES  REMEDIAL  225 

is  the  certain  remedy  for  the  worst  evils  of  the 
whole,  bad  business.  It  would  insure  against 
the  awful  adulteration  which  is  to-day  uni- 
versal; it  would  shut  up  every  public  drinking 
place — for  it  should  dispense  alcohol  only  in 
sealed  packages  a  qui  le  droit;  and  when  the 
hour  struck — when  public  opinion  got  itself 
heard  in  the  houses  of  congress — it  would  close 
its  hand  and  throttle  the  entire  iniquitous  trade. 
It  could  destroy  this  gift-quelle  of  a  nation's 
degradation  with  one  gesture  and  one  act.  That 
is  an  ultimate  ideal.  I  do  not  say  that  gov- 
ernment control  of  the  making  and  selling  of 
alcohol  would  stop  (as  one  stops  a  train)  the 
evil  of  alcoholism.  There  are  forged  bank- 
notes and  false  coins  abroad  in  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  government  issues  the  money  of 
the  land.  There  would  still  be  fraudulent 
liquor  and  furtive  alcoholism;  but  the  ban 
would  be  on  them  and  the  law  could  act.  It 
would  not  stop  the  sale  and  the  drinking  of 
alcohol,  you  say;  no,  it  would  not  stop  it;  but 
it  would  make  it  more  difficult  for  the  drinker 
to  get  drunk — a  distinct  gain.  Moreover,  to  a 
great  extent,  it  would  prevent  the  making  of 
drunkards.     There  would  be  sporadic  drunk- 


226  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

ards — whereof  the  alienist  has  spoken  and  for 
whom  the  asylum  waits — even  as  there  are 
sporadic  murderers;  but  the  state  would  not 
be  in  the  dreadful  business  of  making  them. 
Its  object  would  be  to  guard  this  poison  and 
keep  it  from  the  race.  What  the  alcohol  indus- 
try is  doing  to-day  is  precisely  the  opposite. 
Like  every  other  industry  it  is  tempted  by  profit 
to  produce  more  and  more;  and  so  it  must  force 
it  into  reluctant  markets  at  home  and  abroad. 
While  it  sends  cargoes  of  rum  to  Africa,  it 
forces  on  the  sale  at  home  by  every  hypnotic 
suggestion  of  advertisement — by  every  pre- 
tense of  health-making  and  food-value — 
by  every  temptation  it  can  invent  from 
the  music  of  the  tavern  to  the  dance  of  the 
cabaret. 

Where  the  devil  can't  go  himself  he  sends 
a  woman. 

Where  the  distiller  and  brewer  could  not  sell 
his  poison  unaided  he  called  in  the  poor, 
painted,  unhappy  girls  of  the  night  to  brisken 
up  his  trade.  He  has  produced  such  torrents  of 
drink  that  he  cannot  get  it  sold  in  normal  ways 
of  supply  and  demand;  so  he  has  called  to  his 
aid  the  lie   that  looks  like   an  advertisement 


MEASURES  REMEDIAL  227 

and  the  dreadful  collaboration  of  sinful  women. 
He  has  taken  vice  into  partnership.  This  is  his 
way  of  forcing  drink  on  a  nation  that  would 
fain  be  sober.  Now  all  this  wretched  business 
of  temptation  would  be  halted  were  the  gov- 
ernment to  take  over  alcohol — as  France  has 
taken  tobacco.  Such  a  system  would  not  take 
away  man's  liberty  (of  which  the  brewers  are 
so  jealous),  but  it  would  put  an  end  to  the 
present  method  of  coaxing,  forcing  and  dra- 
gooning him  into  vice.  It  would  indeed  give 
man  back  his  liberty — his  essential  right  to 
stand  for  freedom  of  mind  and  body.  It  would 
in  an  hour  destroy  the  drink-compelling  en- 
vironment which  the  brewers  and  distillers 
have  created  in  their  dives  and  brothels,  in 
their  cabarets  and  dance-halls,  in  their  bar- 
rooms of  gilt  and  glass. 

I  say  that  state  control  is  only  a  stage  on 
the  road  to  a  nation's  regeneration;  but  it  is 
an  etape  that  has  to  be  gone  through,  if  one 
may  take  example  from  other  nations  which  are 
at  almost  the  same  degree  of  national  evolution. 
Once  the  state  has  got  the  traffic  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  conscienceless  traffickers  who  hold 
it  now,  a  sterner  reformation  can  begin.     It 


228  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

can  stop  at  once  the  poisonous  adulteration  on 
which  the  distillers  and  brewers  found  their 
profits.  It  can  strip  the  drinking  place  of  its 
infamous  vice  appeal.  It  can  hold  the  evil 
down  until  such  time  as  the  voice  of  the  nation 
can  make  itself  heard  over  the  clamor  of  the 
interests  that  fatten  on  drink — and  over  the 
oratory  of  the  corrupt  and  purchased  poli- 
ticians. 

A  step  on  the  road:  I  do  not  say  I  am 
against  any  method  of  fighting  alcohol  in  the 
nation;  I  do  not  say  I  am  against  any  of  the 
devised  forms  of  prohibition  and  abolition  for 
which  earnest  men  are  striving;  I  distinctly 
say  I  am  for  them  all — for  any  way  of  destroy- 
ing the  pandemic  plague  of  alcoholism;  but 
the  first  necessary  step  is  to  give  the  govern- 
ment (which  is,  or  should  be,  and  may  be  the 
people)  full  control.  It  is  a  method  which  has 
been  tried;  and  more  than  any  other  it  has 
succeeded.  It  offers  the  fairest  hope  and  the 
greatest  certainty. 

Why  should  the  government  issue  a  license 
to  any  man  to  make  or  sell  alcohol? 

If  the  government  is  to  issue  any  license, 
it  should  be  a  license  to  the  individual  who  has 


MEASURES  REMEDIAL  229 

proved  that  he  can  safely  drink  his  alcohol — 
and  that  revocable  license  should  be  issued  to  him 
only  so  long  as  he  is  at  the  safety  point.  When 
he  can  no  longer  drink  and  be  sober — this  side 
of  social  injury — the  license  should  be  w^ith- 
drawn.  Thus,  his  cherished  liberty  to  poison 
himself  would  be  in  his  own  custody.  He 
would  forfeit  it  only  when  his  progressive  de- 
generation had  made  him  obnoxious  to  family, 
friends,  enemies  and  the  community. 

The  drink  question  is  a  national  question; 
it  is  a  question  of  the  nation's  health — of  its 
welfare  and  of  its  life.  And  the  nation  should 
settle  it.  Not  here  and  there;  not  in  scat- 
tered efforts  toward  local  abatement  of  the  evil; 
the  remedy  should  be  national;  the  state  should 
take  the  whole  bad  business  into  its  hands 
that  it  may — when  the  hour  strikes — stran- 
gle it. 

An  hour  that  has  not  yet  risen  over  our 
dark  intellectual  horizon? 

The  dawn  is  nearer,  I  think,  than  you  fancy. 
The  public  mind  is  angrily  awake.  New  la- 
borers are  going  forth  to  a  new  seed-time, 
whereof  the  harvest  shall  yet  be. 

And  then — just  a  moment — who  is  the  worst 


230  DRINK  AND  BE  SOBER 

enemy  of  the  immediacy  of  this  reform,  for 
which  you  and  I  are  looking  so  largely? 

Believe  me,  he  is  the  man  for  whom  this 
little  book  is  written;  he  is  not  the  rowdy 
drunkard,  already  marked  with  the  plain  stig- 
mata of  alcoholic  dissolution;  he  is,  rather, 
that  smiling,  dangerous  man  who  can  drink  and 
be  sober,  thank  Heaven!  and  who,  checking 
alcoholic  degeneration  in  himself,  passes  on  a 
deadlier  degeneration  to  his  daughters  and  his 
sons.  He  is  in  the  forefront  for  all  the  argu- 
ments for  drink.  And  proudly  he  poses  there 
and  does  not  see  the  ignominy  of  his  posi- 
tion. 

How  should  he  see? 

Already  he  is  poisoned  atop;  morally  he  is 
blind-drunk.  And  mentally  he  is  darkening 
into  irrationality. 

Dear  man,  you  can  drink  and  be  sober  on 
the  physical  level,  but  you  cannot  drink  and 
be  good  and  you  cannot  drink  and  be  wise. 

When  I  had  written  this  sentence  Oliver 
Herford  leaned  over  my  shoulder  and  read  it. 

"  I  see  what  you  mean,"  he  said,  "  even  the 
man  who  drinks  soberly  is  a  fool." 


MEASURES  REMEDIAL  231 

"  To  an  extent — he  is  mentally  impaired." 
"  You  shouldn't  be  too  hard  on  him,"  said 
Mr.   Herford,  ^^  when  he  puts  an  enemy  into 
his  mouth  to  steal  away  his  brains,  it  is  only 
a  petty  larceny  he  is  guilty  of,  anyway." 
A  thought  I  leave  with  you. 


